Paper Info
Title
Novices' Learning Barriers When Using Code Examples in Open-Ended Programming
Abstract
ABSTRACTOpen-ended programming increases students' motivation by allowing them to solve authentic problems and connect programming to their own interests. However, such open-ended projects are also challenging, as they often encourage students to explore new programming features and attempt tasks that they have not learned before. Code examples are effective learning materials for students and are well-suited to supporting open-ended programming. However, there is little work to understand how novices learn with examples during open-ended programming, and few real-world deployments of such tools. In this paper, we explore novices' learning barriers when interacting with code examples during open-ended programming. We deployed Example Helper, a tool that offers galleries of code examples to search and use, with 44 novice students in an introductory programming classroom, working on an open-ended project in Snap. We found three high-level barriers that novices encountered when using examples: decision, search, and integration barriers. We discuss how these barriers arise and design opportunities to address them.
Year
DOI
Venue
2021
10.1145/3430665.3456370
Innovation and Technology in Computer Science Education
DocType
Citations 
PageRank 
Conference
0
0.34
References 
Authors
0
8
Name
Order
Citations
PageRank
Wengran Wang122.05
Archit Kwatra200.34
James Skripchuk300.34
Neeloy Gomes400.68
Alexandra Milliken533.46
Chris Martens616.46
Tiffany Barnes704.73
Thomas W. Price87619.27