Understanding how software works and writing a program are currently frequent requirements when hiring employees. The complexity of learning programming often results in educational failures, student frustration and lack of motivation, because different students prefer different learning paths. Although e-learning courses have led to many improvements in the methodology and the supporting technology for more effective programming learning, misunderstanding of programming principles is one of the main reasons for students leaving school early. Universities face a challenging task: how to harmonise students’ education, focusing on advanced knowledge in the development of software applications, with students’ education in cases where writing code is a new skill. The article proposes a conceptual framework focused on the comprehensive training of future programmers using microlearning and automatic evaluation of source codes to achieve immediate feedback for students. This framework is designed to involve students in the software development of virtual learning environment software that will provide their education, thus ensuring the sustainability of the environment in line with modern development trends. The paper’s final part is devoted to verifying the contribution of the presented elements through quantitative research on the introductory parts of the framework. It turned out that although the application of interactive features did not lead to significant measurable progress during the first semester of study, it significantly improved the results of students in subsequent courses focused on advanced programming.

The number of students who decided to study information technology related study programs is continually increasing. Introductory programming courses represent the most crucial milestone in information technology education and often reflect students’ ability to think abstractly and systematically, solve problems, and design their solutions. Even though many students who attend universities have already completed some introductory courses of programming, there is still a large group of students with limited programming skills. This drawback often increases during the first term, and it is often the main reason why students leave study too early. There is a myriad of technologies and tools which can be involved in the programming course to increase students’ chances of mastering programming. The introductory programming courses used in this study has been gradually extended over the four academic years with the automated source code assessment of students’ programming assignments followed by the implementation of a set of suitably designed microlearning units. The final four datasets were analysed to confirm the suitability of automated assessment and microlearning units as predictors of at-risk students and students’ outcomes in the introductory programming courses. The research results proved the significant contribution of automated code assessment in students’ learning outcomes in the elementary topics of learning programming. Simultaneously, it proved a moderate to strong dependence between the students’ activity and achievement in the activities and final students’ outcomes.

The paper investigates the impact of different types of e-learning course activities on the first-year university students' results in the introductory programming course. The primary goal of three years of research is to uncover the role of a few types of activities, especially the purpose of an automated assessment. Despite the education systems function supported the automated assessment of source code is one of the most useful tools of programming learning, there are only a few researches inspected its effectiveness and impact. The paper compares involved groups of students, their motivation and expectations collected via a set of questionnaires. It investigates the significance of automated assessment of source code in the educational process. The results show significant differences between groups with and without the use of automated assessment were not proven. Finally, the authors researched the relationship between the number of solved tasks and the student's outcomes of the evaluation and identified a positive correlation.

The paper describes the architecture, processes and issues related to the current phase of the development and pivotal deployment of the microlearning-based web application for improving programming skills and learning other software engineering topics. This application integrates the advantages of microlearning approach, gamification and learning analytics into the existing learning ecosystem and IT infrastructure of the contemporary educational organisation. The main aim of the paper is to review and analyse different parts of the architecture of a modern educational application, describe their main features and unique roles. The necessity to use open standards for storing educational data and its further analysis using learning analytics methods is emphasised. Subsequently, the current version of the developed micro-learning application for learning programming languages is presented. Finally, the first experience with its pivotal deployment as well as the direction of its future development is described in detail.