Novices' Learning Barriers When Using Code Examples in Open-Ended Programming

Abstract

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 openended 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.

Pinpoint: A Record, Replay, and Extract System to Support Code Comprehension and Reuse

“…During this process, programmers may directly copy a subset of an example code to their own code, or may reimplement a functionality by themselves after reading and learning an example [37]. Prior work has identified many barriers programmers encounter when integrating example code [36]. For example, Wang et al analyzed 44 novice programmers' example integration process and found that these programmers encounter barriers in understanding how to integrate an unfamiliar code block into their own context, mapping the functionality of a part of an example to their own code, and modifying the example to fit their own needs [36].…”

“…Prior work has identified many barriers programmers encounter when integrating example code [36]. For example, Wang et al analyzed 44 novice programmers' example integration process and found that these programmers encounter barriers in understanding how to integrate an unfamiliar code block into their own context, mapping the functionality of a part of an example to their own code, and modifying the example to fit their own needs [36]. Wang et al also found that students prefer smaller code examples with few or no unfamiliar code blocks [36].…”

“…However, program reuse requires not only knowledge of the programming language and APIs in the example [36], but also skills such as code navigation and code comprehension [13]. Many Scratch or Snap!…”

“…Many Scratch or Snap! users are beginner programmers without strong prior programming experience [9], and can easily encounter barriers when identifying, understanding, and integrating features from example programs [36]. This suggests a need to help such users navigate complex examples, identify and understand which code is responsible for specific features, and integrate them into their own program.…”

Development of CNN-Based Data Crawler to Support Learning Block Programming

“…The difficulties of programming education for novice learners have been confirmed through many studies [11][12][13]. The difficulty of the programming process is that when an error occurs, the cause is not known, so even if the problem is solved, the procedure is not correctly recognized.…”