Learning Experiences in Programming: The Motivating Effect of a Physical Interface

A study of undergraduate students learning to program compared the use of a physical interface with use of a screen-based equivalent interface to obtain insights into what made for an engaging learning experience. Emotions characterized by the HUMAINE scheme were analysed, identifying the links between the emotions experienced during programming and their origin. By capturing the emotional experiences of learners immediately after a programming experience, evidence was collected of the very positive emotions experienced by learners developing a program using a physical interface (Arduino) in comparison with a similar program developed using a screen-based equivalent interface

Introductory programming: a systematic literature review

As computing becomes a mainstream discipline embedded in the school curriculum and acts as an enabler for an increasing range of academic disciplines in higher education, the literature on introductory programming is growing. Although there have been several reviews that focus on specific aspects of introductory programming, there has been no broad overview of the literature exploring recent trends across the breadth of introductory programming. This paper is the report of an ITiCSE working group that conducted a systematic review in order to gain an overview of the introductory programming literature. Partitioning the literature into papers addressing the student, teaching, the curriculum, and assessment, we explore trends, highlight advances in knowledge over the past 15 years, and indicate possible directions for future research

Designing Engaging Learning Experiences in Programming

In this paper we describe work to investigate the creation of engaging programming learning experiences. Background research informed the design of four fieldwork studies to explore how programming tasks could be framed to motivate learners. Our empirical findings from these four field studies are summarized here, with a particular focus upon one – Whack a Mole – which compared the use of a physical interface with the use of a screen-based equivalent interface to obtain insights into what made for an engaging learning experience. Emotions reported by two sets of participant undergraduate students were analyzed, identifying the links between the emotions experienced during programming and their origin. Evidence was collected of the very positive emotions experienced by learners programming with a physical interface (Arduino) in comparison with a similar program developed using a screen-based equivalent interface. A follow-up study provided further evidence of the motivation of personalized design of programming tangible physical artefacts. Collating all the evidence led to the design of a set of ‘Learning Dimensions’ which may provide educators with insights to support key design decisions for the creation of engaging programming learning experiences

Seeking Flow from Fine-Grained Log Data

Flow is the experience of deep absorption in a demanding, intrinsically-motivating task conducted with skill. We consider how to measure behavioural correlates of flow from fine-grained process data extracted from programming environments. Specifically, we propose measuring affective factors related to flow non-intrusively based on log data. Presently, such affective factors are typically measured intrusively (by self-report), which naturally will break the flow. We evaluate our approach in a pilot study, where we use log data and survey data collected from an introductory programming course. The log data is fine-grained, containing timestamped actions at the keystroke level from the process of solving programming assignments, while the survey data has been collected at the end of every completed assignment. The survey data in the pilot study comprises of Likert-like items measuring perceived educational value, perceived difficulty, and students' self-reported focus when solving the assignments. We study raw and derived log data metrics, by looking for relationships between the metrics and the survey data. We discuss the results of the pilot study and provide suggestions for future work related to non-intrusive measures of programmer affect.Peer reviewe

Teaching Introductory Programming from A to Z: Twenty-Six Tips from the Trenches

A solid foundation in computer programming is critical for students to succeed in advanced computing courses, but teaching such an introductory course is challenging. Therefore, it is important to develop better approaches in order to improve teaching effectiveness and enhance student learning. In this paper, we present 26 tips for teaching introductory programming drawn from the experiences of four well-qualified college professors. It is our hope that our peers can pick up some tips from this paper, apply them in their own classroom, improve their teaching effectiveness, and ultimately enhance student learning

Expertise and intuition: A tale of three theories

Several authors have hailed intuition as one of the defining features of expertise. In particular, while disagreeing on almost anything that touches on human cognition and artificial intelligence, Hubert Dreyfus and Herbert Simon agreed on this point. However, the highly influential theories of intuition they proposed differed in major ways, especially with respect to the role given to search and as to whether intuition is holistic or analytic. Both theories suffer from empirical weaknesses. In this paper, we show how, with some additions, a recent theory of expert memory (the template theory) offers a coherent and wide-ranging explanation of intuition in expert behaviour. It is shown that the theory accounts for the key features of intuition: it explains the rapid onset of intuition and its perceptual nature, provides mechanisms for learning, incorporates processes showing how perception is linked to action and emotion, and how experts capture the entirety of a situation. In doing so, the new theory addresses the issues problematic for Dreyfus’s and Simon’s theories. Implications for research and practice are discussed

Psychophysiological measurements in programming task:guidelines for conducting EMG research

Abstract. Programming languages have been studied and developed throughout history of programming. There are lots of different programming languages that are being used in software development, but only core languages are taught in Universities. Programming languages usually have their own syntax, which may differ greatly from each other. Using different programming languages for same task may provoke different emotions in programmers, depending their knowledge on the language. Research on programming and programming languages have generally focused on technical and exterior aspects. More recently, there has been some research on the programmers and their emotions during the programming tasks. This master’s thesis focuses on latter and aims to provide new information of programmers experienced emotions during the programming tasks by using EMG-recordings. This master thesis’ main study focus is in psychophysiology, which combines psychology to physiological research, by finding correlation between physiological activity and emotional phenomenon. This study assessed university students experienced emotions when conducting programming tasks with C and Python programming languages. EMG measurement device was used on the test participants to record signal data from facial based muscles for smiling and frowning activity, which are linked to positive and negative emotions. This study’s results showed small differences with emotional experiences during the programming tasks, but the overall results were not statistically significant. Therefore, more research on this topic is needed for more consistent results. Additionally, this research has provided guidelines on how EMG studies are conducted on laboratory setting and suggestions for future studies

How to Ask for Technical Help? Evidence-based Guidelines for Writing Questions on Stack Overflow

Context: The success of Stack Overflow and other community-based question-and-answer (Q&A) sites depends mainly on the will of their members to answer others' questions. In fact, when formulating requests on Q&A sites, we are not simply seeking for information. Instead, we are also asking for other people's help and feedback. Understanding the dynamics of the participation in Q&A communities is essential to improve the value of crowdsourced knowledge. Objective: In this paper, we investigate how information seekers can increase the chance of eliciting a successful answer to their questions on Stack Overflow by focusing on the following actionable factors: affect, presentation quality, and time. Method: We develop a conceptual framework of factors potentially influencing the success of questions in Stack Overflow. We quantitatively analyze a set of over 87K questions from the official Stack Overflow dump to assess the impact of actionable factors on the success of technical requests. The information seeker reputation is included as a control factor. Furthermore, to understand the role played by affective states in the success of questions, we qualitatively analyze questions containing positive and negative emotions. Finally, a survey is conducted to understand how Stack Overflow users perceive the guideline suggestions for writing questions. Results: We found that regardless of user reputation, successful questions are short, contain code snippets, and do not abuse with uppercase characters. As regards affect, successful questions adopt a neutral emotional style. Conclusion: We provide evidence-based guidelines for writing effective questions on Stack Overflow that software engineers can follow to increase the chance of getting technical help. As for the role of affect, we empirically confirmed community guidelines that suggest avoiding rudeness in question writing.Comment: Preprint, to appear in Information and Software Technolog

A Conceptual Framework for a Software Development Process based on Computational Thinking

A software development process is a mechanism for problem solving to help software developers plan, design and structure the development of software to solve a problem. Without a process to guide the structured evolution of a solution, it is extremely likely that at least some aspect of the resulting software will be omitted or incorrectly implemented. Even though the importance of utilising a software process for solving problems is accepted in the business and academic communities, it is a topic that is addressed very lightly (if at all) in most freshman undergraduate computing courses with most courses focussing on programming procedures rather than the process of how to develop a solution. A consequence of this is that some students go on to develop maladaptive cognitive practices where they rush to implement solutions to problems with little planning. Typically these maladaptive practices involve surface practices such as coding by rote learning and cutting and pasting code from existing projects. Such practices can be very difficult to unlearn and can result in students lacking skills in planning and designing solutions to problems which can persist to graduation. Despite these issues, little active research has been found on the development of software processes aimed at freshman third level learners and consequently there are few approaches available to help freshman students through all stages of the software process. However, there is a wealth of current research into computational thinking (CT) as a mechanism to help solve computational problems. Even though CT is seen as a key practice of computer science, most of the research into CT (as a named area) is aimed at 1st and 2nd level education with CT being a more implicit part of third level computing courses. This suggests that there is an exciting opportunity to explicitly exploit the affordances and skills of CT into a software process aimed at freshman third level learners. This paper presents work which has been carried out as part of an ongoing research project into this issue in which the key skills associated with computational thinking are incorporated into a conceptual framework which will provide a structure for a software process aimed at freshman undergraduate computing students. This research is not tied to any particular programming paradigm but its use is assumed to be in the context of imperative, commercial programming languages. The framework is centred on declarative knowledge (in the form of threshold concepts) and procedural knowledge (in the form of CT skills) scaffolding freshman software development from initial planning through to final solution. The framework known as Computational Analysis and Design Engineered Thinking (CADET) – once operationalised as a software process with an accompanying support tool - aims to support the structured development of both software and student self-efficacy in the topic