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Tinkering has been shown to have a positive influence on students in open-ended making activities. Open-ended programming assignments in block-based programming resemble making activities in that both of them encourage students to tinker with tools to create their own solutions to achieve a goal. However, previous studies of tinkering in programming discussed tinkering as a broad, ambiguous term, and investigated only self-reported data. To our knowledge, no research has studied student tinkering behaviors while solving problems in block-based programming environments. In this position paper, we propose a definition for tinkering in block-based programming environments as a kind of behavior that students exhibit when testing, exploring, and struggling during problem-solving. We introduce three general categories of tinkering behaviors (test-based, prototype-based, and construction-based tinkering) derived from student data, and use case studies to demonstrate how students exhibited these behaviors in problem-solving. We created the definitions using a mixed-methods research design combining a literature review with data-driven insights from submissions of two open-ended programming assignments in iSnap, a block-based programming environment. We discuss the implication of each type of tinkering behavior for learning. Our study and results are the first in this domain to define tinkering based on student behaviors in a block-based programming environment. CCS CONCEPTS • Social and professional topics → Computing education; • Applied computing → Interactive learning environments;

The "Beauty and Joy of Computing" Computer Science Principles class has inspired many new teachers to learn to teach creative computing classes in high schools. However, new computer science teachers feel under-prepared to grade openended programming assignments and support their students' successful learning. Rubrics have widely been used to help teaching assistants grade programs, and are a promising way to support new teachers to learn how to grade BJC programs. In this paper, we adapt general coding criteria from auto-graders to a lab where students write code to draw a brick wall. We tested the rubric on student assignments and showed that we can achieve high inter-rater agreement with the refined rubric.

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