Case Study: San Jose State University improves programming education with Google for Education

San José State University supports students to teach themselves programming basics

San José State University, working with Google for Education, needed a way to give computer science students more hands-on programming practice despite limited virtual machine capacity and the risk that reused coding problems could be found online. The university wanted a scalable way to support self-directed learning for both CS majors and students from other disciplines using tools like Google Cloud Platform, Compute Engine, and Cloud SQL.

Google for Education helped SJSU build CodeCheck, a web-based autograder that runs on Google Compute Engine and uses Cloud SQL and Stackdriver for scalable backend operations, monitoring, and diagnostics. The system enabled unlimited practice exercises with instant feedback, improved student outcomes, and reduced workload for instructors: one Java non-majors section performed 50% higher than the control group, a programming languages class scored 20% higher on Scheme questions, and in a C++ course the average attempts per problem fell by one-third while completion time was cut in half.

San Jose State University

Cay Horstmann

Computer Science Professor