Common sense computing (episode 4): debugging

Simon, Beth; Bouvier, Dennis; Chen, Tzu-Yi; Lewandowski, Gary; McCartney, Robert; Sanders, Kate

doi:10.1080/08993400802114698

Cited by 25 publications

(12 citation statements)

References 12 publications

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“…To prove the finding in the literature suggesting that novices usually tinkered the code randomly [14], students were asked whether they planned how to carry out the debugging before starting it. However, the student 5 replied no and said that he always modify the code directly without any plan.…”

Section: ) Modifying the Program By Trial And Errormentioning

confidence: 99%

“…However, most novices could not apply debugging techniques effectively. Some of them even tinkered aimlessly [14]. Therefore, addressing the importance of developing students' tracking and debugging skills is needed [2].…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…To understand why and how program debugging frustrated novices, Many works have devoted in the research of programming debugging [11], including early research for BASIC [9][10][11] and recent research for JAVA [12][13][14]. Fitzgerald et al suggested that students who were good debuggers were good novice programmers [11].…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

See 2 more Smart Citations

Novices' Debugging Behaviors in VB Programming

Chen

Lin

2013

2013 Learning and Teaching in Computing and Engineering

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This study investigates the debugging behaviors of novices in the Visual Basic (VB) programming environment. To understand how novice programmers solve debugging problems, we employed a mixed-method, which used both quantitative and qualitative data , including a questionnaire survey and a debugging-behaviors analysis. Seventy-two students from a vocational high school in Taipei participated in the study. The results indicated that most students believed debugging skill is due to individual aptitude and cannot be developed through learning. Most students did not employ debugging tools provided in Visual Basic environment or even were aware of the existence of the tools. Although most students enjoyed the achievement of resolving bugs, they disliked the challenge of debugging.

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Section: ) Modifying the Program By Trial And Errormentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Novices' Debugging Behaviors in VB Programming

Chen

Lin

2013

2013 Learning and Teaching in Computing and Engineering

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“…In other words, students have rich preconceptions about computer science when they enter college and, since their learning will build from these preconceptions, a deeper understanding of these preconceptions should allow for more effective teaching and learning. Earlier commonsense computing projects probed novice computing students' pre-existing knowledge of sorting, debugging, concurrency, and algorithm analysis [14,4,13,7,6]. These studies found that students did possess knowledge that translated well to computer science; for example, 69% of students could describe a coherent algorithm to sort a list of numbers [14], and 97% of students could identify a significant problem associated with concurrency [6].…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 98%

User interface evaluation by novices

Bouvier

Chen

Lewandowski

et al. 2012

Proceedings of the 17th ACM Annual Conference on Innovation and Technology in Computer Science Education

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This study examines the extent to which novice computing students with minimal computer science coursework and no training in user interface (UI) evaluation consider UI concepts such as usability, user experience, and the context in which software will be used when evaluating an interface. In analyzing the responses of 149 novice computer science students who were asked to evaluate two interfaces for converting temperatures between Fahrenheit and Celsius, we observed that students generally considered usability and user experience factors, but were less likely to consider context. For educators, this exact task could be given to a class in order to initiate discussion of usercentered design; the study also provides a framework for structuring the discussion. More generally, the results of this study provide insight into some opportunities and challenges in teaching good interface design and evaluation skills.

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“…Many used iteration; to our surprise, most iteration involved posttest loops. In 2008, 13 we described our investigation of students' commonsense knowledge of debugging, giving beginners one of four questions designed to elicit their knowledge of debugging strategies. The questions asked them to describe the advice they would give people whose lights did not turn on when they flipped the switch; how they would locate the moment things go wrong in the children's game "telephone"; how they would find a Starbucks if they were in a strange city where they did not speak the language; or an experience of their own involving troubleshooting.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%