ABSTRACT
Learning programming is a very complex activity. Student must understand and master the way of thinking, which is often different from the thinking to which he is accustomed in everyday life. A virtual learning environment named Priscilla is based on an educational framework combining primary microlearning activities with an automatic evaluation of programs using automated assessment. The article presents the form and structure of the Java programming course, a pilot course for using the Pricilla system in teaching. This course was used in university education in the COVID pandemic period. The article aims to describe the results of the pilot deployment and, based on the experience and feedback from students, generalise the principles and rules of creating educational courses based on microlearning and automated assessment. © The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022.