skip to main content
US FlagAn official website of the United States government
dot gov icon
Official websites use .gov
A .gov website belongs to an official government organization in the United States.
https lock icon
Secure .gov websites use HTTPS
A lock ( lock ) or https:// means you've safely connected to the .gov website. Share sensitive information only on official, secure websites.

Explore Research Products in the PAR
It may take a few hours for recently added research products to appear in PAR search results.


Title: Novices' Learning Barriers When Using Code Examples in Open-Ended Programming
Open-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.  more » « less
Award ID(s):
1917885
PAR ID:
10279566
Author(s) / Creator(s):
; ; ; ; ; ; ;
Date Published:
Journal Name:
ITiCSE '21: Proceedings of the 26th ACM Conference on Innovation and Technology in Computer Science Education
Page Range / eLocation ID:
394 to 400
Format(s):
Medium: X
Sponsoring Org:
National Science Foundation
More Like this
  1. ; ; ; ; ; ; (, Proceedings of the Annual Technical Symposium)
    Open-ended programming engages students by connecting computing with their real-world experience and personal interest. However, such open-ended programming tasks can be challenging, as they require students to implement features that they may be unfamiliar with. Code examples help students to generate ideas and implement program features, but students also encounter many learning barriers when using them. We explore how to design code examples to support novices' effective example use by presenting our experience of building and deploying Example Helper, a system that supports students with a gallery of code examples during open-ended programming. We deployed Example Helper in an undergraduate CS0 classroom to investigate students' example usage experience, finding that students used different strategies to browse, understand, experiment with, and integrate code examples and that students who make more sophisticated plans also used more examples in their projects. 
    more » « less
  2. ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; et al (, Proceedings of the 2023 Conference on on Innovation and Technology in Computer Science Education)
    Many students rely on examples when learning to program, but they often face barriers when incorporating these examples into their own code and learning the concepts they present. As a step towards designing effective example interfaces that can support student learning, we investigate novices' needs and strategies when using examples to write code. We conducted a study with 12 pairs of high school students working on open-ended game design projects, using a system that allows students to browse examples based on their functionality, and to view and copy the example code. We analyzed interviews, screen recordings, and log data, identifying 5 moments when novices request examples, and 4 strategies that arise when students use examples. We synthesize these findings into principles that can inform the design of future example systems to better support students. 
    more » « less
  3. ; ; ; ; ; ; ; (, Proceedings of the 27th ACM Conference on on Innovation and Technology in Computer Science Education)
    Our researchers seek to support students in building block-based programming projects that are motivating and engaging as well as valuable practice in learning to code. A difficult part of the programming process is planning. In this research, we explore how novice programmers used a custom-built planning tool, PlanIT, contrasted against how they used storyboarding when planning games. In a three-part study, we engaged novices in planning and programming three games: a maze game, a break-out game, and a mashup of the two. In a set of five case studies, we show how five pairs of students approached the planning and programming of these three games, illustrating that students felt more creative when storyboarding rather than using PlanIT. We end with a discussion on the implications of this work for designing supports for novices to plan open-ended projects. 
    more » « less
  4. ; ; ; ; ; ; (, ACM)
    In computing classrooms, building an open-ended programming project engages students in the process of designing and implementing an idea of their own choice. An explicit planning process has been shown to help students build more complex and ambitious open-ended projects. However, novices encounter difficulties in exploring and creatively expressing ideas during planning. We present Idea Builder, a storyboarding-based planning system to help novices visually express their ideas. Idea Builder includes three features: 1) storyboards to help students express a variety of ideas that map easily to programming code, 2) animated example mechanics with example actors to help students explore the space of possible ideas supported by the programming environments, and 3) synthesized starter code to help students easily transition from planning to programming. Through two studies with high school coding workshops, we found that students self-reported as feeling creative and feeling easy to communicate ideas; having access to animated example mechanics of an actor help students to build those actors in their plans and projects; and that most students perceived the synthesized starter code from Idea Builder as helpful and time-saving. 
    more » « less
  5. ; ; (, International Conference on Program Comprehension (ICPC))
    Developers and computing students are usually expected to master multiple programming languages. To learn a new language, developers often turn to online search to find information and code examples. However, insights on how learners perform code search when working with an unfamiliar language are lacking. Understanding how learners search and the challenges they encounter when using an unfamiliar language can motivate future tools and techniques to better support subsequent language learners. Research on code search behavior typically involves monitoring developers during search activities through logs or in situ surveys. We conducted a study on how computing students search for code in an unfamiliar programming language with 18 graduate students working on VBA tasks in a lab environment. Our surveys explicitly asked about search success and query reformulation to gather reliable data on those metrics. By analyzing the combination of search logs and survey responses, we found that students typically search to explore APIs or find example code. Approximately 50% of queries that precede clicks on documentation or tutorials successfully solved the problem. Students frequently borrowed terms from languages with which they are familiar when searching for examples in an unfamiliar language, but term borrowing did not impede search success. Edit distances between reformulated queries and non-reformulated queries were nearly the same. These results have implications for code search research, especially on reformulation, and for research on supporting programmers when learning a new language. 
    more » « less
  • Citation Formats
  • MLA
  • APA
  • Chicago
  • BibTeX
  • Save / Share this Record
  • Send to Email