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Debugging, a recurrent practice while programming, can reveal significant information about student learning. Making electronic textile (e-textile) artifacts entails numerous opportunities for students to debug across circuitry, coding, crafting and designing domains. In this study, 69 high school students worked on a series of four different e-textiles projects over eight weeks as a part of their introductory computer science course. We analyzed debugging challenges and resolutions reported by students in their portfolios and interviews and found not only a wide range of computational concepts but also the development of specific computational practices such as being iterative and incremental in students’ debugging e-textiles projects. In the discussion, we address the need for more studies to recognize other computational practices such as abstraction and modularization, the potential of hybrid contexts for debugging, and the social aspects of debugging.
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Debugging for Art’s Sake: Beginning Programmers’ Debugging Activity in an Expressive Coding Context
Debugging is fundamental to the theory, practice, and learning of computing, and recent research suggests that a learning trajectory for debugging can be defined alongside trajectories for other core disciplinary practices. At the same time, other work in computing education has pressed the field to broaden its conception of the contexts where computational thinking occurs, identifying debugging activities and practices across diverse and multi-modal settings. In resolving this productive tension between systematically describing debugging and recognizing its broad reach, we argue researchers should attend to rich descriptions of situated debugging, especially among beginning debuggers. We present data from a week-long, free summer camp, Code Your Art, that engaged middle-school students in creating expressive computational visual effects. Here we find that students’ responses to debugging tasks varied sharply across tasks. We argue that debugging work emerges in interaction with features of the environment, and we discuss design refinements we have made to pursue and study this conjecture.
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- Award ID(s):
- 1742257
- PAR ID:
- 10202104
- Editor(s):
- Gresalfi, M.S.
- Date Published:
- Journal Name:
- The Interdisciplinarity of the Learning Sciences, 14th International Conference of the Learning Sciences (ICLS) 2020
- Volume:
- 3
- Page Range / eLocation ID:
- 1229-1236
- Format(s):
- Medium: X
- Sponsoring Org:
- National Science Foundation
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Debugging, a recurrent practice while programming, can reveal significant information about student learning. Making electronic textile (e-textile) artifacts entails numerous opportunities for students to debug across circuitry, coding, crafting and designing domains. In this study, 69 high school students worked on a series of four different e-textiles projects over eight weeks as a part of their introductory computer science course. We analyzed debugging challenges and resolutions reported by students in their portfolios and interviews and found not only a wide range of computational concepts but also the development of specific computational practices such as being iterative and incremental in students’ debugging e-textiles projects. In the discussion, we address the need for more studies to recognize other computational practices such as abstraction and modularization, the potential of hybrid contexts for debugging, and the social aspects of debugging.more » « less
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Gresalfi, M.; Horn, I. (Ed.)Much attention has focused on student learning while making physical computational artifacts such as robots or electronic textiles, but little is known about how students engage with the hardware and software debugging issues that often arise. In order to better understand students’ debugging strategies and practices, we conducted and video-recorded eight think- aloud sessions (~45 minutes each) of high school student pairs debugging electronic textiles projects with researcher-designed programming and circuitry/crafting bugs. We analyzed each video to understand pairs’ debugging strategies and practices in navigating the multi- representational problem space. Our findings reveal the importance of employing system-level strategies while debugging physical computing systems, and of coordinating between various components of physical computing systems, for instance between the physical artifact, representations on paper, and the onscreen programming environment. We discuss the implications of our findings for future research and designing instruction and tools for learning with and debugging physical computing systems.more » « less
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Computational thinking has become the calling card for re-introducing coding into schools. While much attention has focused on how students engage in designing systems, applications, and other computational artifacts as a measure of success for computational thinking, far fewer efforts have focused on what goes into remediating problems in designing systems and interactions because learners invariably make mistakes that need fixing-or debugging. In this panel, we examine the often overlooked practice of debugging that presents significant learning challenges (and opportunities) to students in completing assignments and instructional challenges to teachers in helping students to succeed in their classrooms. The panel participants will review what we know and don't know about debugging, discuss ways to conceptualize and study debugging, and present instructional approaches for helping teachers and students to engage productively in debugging situations.more » « less
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Objectives. Physical computing systems are increasingly being integrated into secondary school science and STEM instruction, yet little is known about how teachers, especially those with little background and experience in computing, help students during the inevitable debugging moments that arise. In this article, we describe a framework, comprising two dimensions, for characterizing how teachers support students as they debug a physical computing system called the Data Sensor Hub (DASH). The DASH enables students to program sensors to measure, analyze, and visualize data as they engage in science inquiry activities. Participants. Five secondary school teachers implemented an inquiry-oriented instructional unit designed to introduce students to working with the DASH as a tool for scientific inquiry. Study Method. Findings drew on video analysis of the teachers’ classroom implementations of the unit. A review of the data corpus led to the selection of 23 moments where the teachers supported an individual or small groups of students engaged in debugging. These moments were analyzed using a grounded perspective based on Interaction Analysis to characterize the teachers’ varied interactional approaches. Findings. Our analysis revealed how teachers’ moves during debugging moments fell along two dimensions. The first dimension characterizes teachers’ positioning during the debugging interactions, ranging from a positioning for teacher understanding to a positioning for student understanding of the bug. The second dimension characterizes the inquiry orientation of the teachers’ questions and guidance, ranging from focusing on the debugging process to focusing on the product—or fixing the bug. Further, teachers’ moves often fell along different points on these dimensions given nuances in the instructional context. Conclusions. The framework offers a first step toward characterizing teachers’ debugging pedagogy as they support students during debugging moments. It also calls attention to how teachers do not necessarily need to be programming experts to effectively help students learn independent and generalizable debugging strategies. Further, it illustrates the variety of expertise that teachers can bring to debugging moments to support students learning to debug. Finally, the framework provides implications for the design of professional learning and supports for teachers as they increasingly are asked to support students in computing—and debugging—activities across a range of disciplines.more » « less
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