  Students sometimes produce code that works but that its author does not
comprehend. For example, a student may apply a poorly-understood code template,
stumble upon a working solution through trial and error, or plagiarize.
Similarly, passing an automated functional assessment does not guarantee that
the student understands their code. One way to tackle these issues is to probe
students' comprehension by asking them questions about their own programs. We
propose an approach to automatically generate questions about student-written
program code. We moreover propose a use case for such questions in the context
of automatic assessment systems: after a student's program passes unit tests,
the system poses questions to the student about the code. We suggest that these
questions can enhance assessment systems, deepen student learning by acting as
self-explanation prompts, and provide a window into students' program
comprehension. This discussion paper sets an agenda for future technical
development and empirical research on the topic.
