Title
Understanding Problem Solving Behavior Of 6-8 Graders In A Debugging Game
Abstract
Debugging is an over-looked component in K-12 computational thinking education. Few K-12 programming environments are designed to teach debugging, and most debugging research were conducted on college-aged students. In this paper, we presented debugging exercises to 6th-8th grade students and analyzed their problem solving behaviors in a programming game - BOTS. Apart from the perspective of prior literature, we identified student behaviors in relation to problem solving stages, and correlated these behaviors with student prior programming experience and performance. We found that in our programming game, debugging required deeper understanding than writing new codes. We also found that problem solving behaviors were significantly correlated with students' self-explanation quality, number of code edits, and prior programming experience. This study increased our understanding of younger students' problem solving behavior, and provided actionable suggestions to the future design of debugging exercises in BOTS and similar environments.
Year
DOI
Venue
2017
10.1080/08993408.2017.1308651
COMPUTER SCIENCE EDUCATION
Keywords
Field
DocType
Debugging, K-12, educational games, computational thinking
Programming language,Computer science,Computational thinking,Knowledge management,Critical thinking,Teaching method,Mathematics education,Debugging
Journal
Volume
Issue
ISSN
27
1
0899-3408
Citations 
PageRank 
References 
5
0.65
18
Authors
4
Name
Order
Citations
PageRank
Zhongxiu Liu1294.19
Rui Zhi2114.48
Andrew Hicks37210.03
Tiffany Barnes429866.88