Effects of oral metaphors and allegories on programming problem solving

Abstract

Metaphors of ordinary concepts are intensively used in computer science for naming abstract concepts and for designing users interfaces. Metaphors are mappings from a source domain (e.g., a stream) to a target domain (e.g., a sequence of bytes). Typically computing phenomena are explained using incoherent discourses at the source domain, formed by metaphors taken from a diversity of origins. Nonetheless, versatility of metaphors allows for the creation of coherent discourses in the origin domain that map the target computing discourse, and we call them allegories. The limited number of existing studies about this topic has compared only textual allegories, visual allegories, and the traditional unconnected metaphors. Although their findings are heterogeneous, equal effectiveness is the most frequent empirical result between these three types of metaphors. Furthermore, we have not found any study about oral allegories, in spite of oral being the most used modality for metaphors in computer science education. This article experimentally compares the effects of oral allegories and oral metaphors on a complex problem‐solving task. As in previous studies, our results did not find any significant differences on support or detriment of oral allegories. Our results support new metaphor theories posing that the context significantly influences the metaphors’ efficacy, and encourages future research about the interaction between context and allegories.

Event-driven Programming in Programming Education

“…However, these two topics were introduced only in the very end of the course, so unfortunately the collected problem counts are not very representative compared to the other problem categories. Second, a study by Hidalgo-Céspedes et al [2018] on the effects of teaching concepts related to event-driven programming using metaphors and allegories did not find significant differences between those two teaching approaches.…”

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“…I många avseenden skulle det därför vara missvisande att benämna dessa begrepp som metaforer. Snarare är de att betrakta som exempel på metaforer som över tid har blivit till konventionaliserade tekniska begrepp (Hidalgo-Céspedes et al, 2018). Det är svårt att säga exakt hur en sådan process går till, men Cameron (2008) poängterar att både processen och resultatet av en konventionalisering ser olika ut i olika språkliga diskurser.…”

An Event Listener or an Event Handler?

“…The few works that contribute fragments to EDP-related knowledge based on empirical data analysis mainly focus on visual block-based languages such as Scratch, LaPlaya, and App Inventor [e.g., 5]. The other works address topics such as computational thinking [7], oral metaphors and allegories in problem solving [8], and learning object oriented programming [20].…”