Lowering the Barriers to Programming: A Survey of Programming Environments and Languages for Novice Programmers

Kelleher, Caitlin; Pausch, Randy

doi:10.21236/ada457911

Cited by 266 publications

(358 citation statements)

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“…Other systems which provided some form of ECEMs, but for which no quantitative evaluations were carried out are Argen (Toomey and Gjengset, 2011), HelpMeOut (Hartmann et al, 2010), a system by Lang (2002), and JJ (Motil and Epstein, nd), discussed by Kelleher and Pausch (2005) and Farragher and Dobson (2000).…”

Section: Compiler Error Enhancementmentioning

confidence: 99%

Effective compiler error message enhancement for novice programming students

Becker

Glanville

Iwashima

et al. 2016

Computer Science Education

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Programming is an essential skill that all computing students must master. However programming can be difficult to learn. Compiler error messages are crucial for correcting errors, but are often difficult to understand and pose a barrier to progress for many novices. High frequencies of errors, particularly repeated errors, have been shown to be indicators of students who are struggling with learning to program. This study involves a custom IDE that enhances Java compiler error messages, intended to be more useful to novices than those supplied by the compiler. The effectiveness of this approach was tested in an empirical control/intervention study of approximately 200 students generating almost 50,000 errors. The design allows for direct comparisons between enhanced and non-enhanced error messages. Results show that the intervention group experienced reductions in the number of overall errors, errors per student, and several repeated error metrics. This work is important for two reasons. First, the effects of error message enhancement have been recently debated in the literature. This study provides substantial evidence that it can be effective. Second, these results should be generalizable at least in part, to other programming languages, students and institutions, as we show that the control group of this study is comparable to several others using Java and other languages.

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Section: Compiler Error Enhancementmentioning

confidence: 99%

Effective compiler error message enhancement for novice programming students

Becker

Glanville

Iwashima

et al. 2016

Computer Science Education

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“…Researchers have also found that alleviating syntax problems helps students focus on the semantic ones (Hohmann, 1992;Soloway, 1993;Anderson, 1989;Mannila, Peltomaki & Salakoski, 2006). Visual programming -in which students construct programs using graphical objects in a drag-and-drop interface-has been shown to be effective in alleviating these difficulties (Kelleher & Pausch, 2005). Examples of agent-based visual programming environments are AgentSheets (Repenning, 1993), StarLogo TNG (Klopfer, Yoon, & Um, 2005), Scratch (Maloney et al, 2004), ViMAP (Sengupta, Farris & Wright, 2012) and Alice (Conway, 1997).…”

Section: Agent-based Visual Programming and Tangible Computation For Chmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…In agent-based programming, a user creates a computer program by using simple rules to command the movement and behavior of computational agents, e.g., the Logo turtle (Papert, 1980;diSessa, Abelson & Polger, 1991;Repenning, 1993;Kelleher & Pausch, 2005;Resnick et al, 2009;Sengupta et al, 2013). In this paper, we extend this argument and propose that a particular form of agent-based programming and modeling, in which control of a computational agent is socio-technically distributed, can be leveraged to integrate diverse STEM domains for children in elementary grades.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Integrated STEM in Elementary Grades Using Distributed Agent-based Computation

Sengupta

Krishnan

Wright

2014

Proceedings of the 6th International Conference on Computer Supported Education

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Abstract:We investigate how the integration of visual agent-based programming and computationally augmented physical structures can support curricular integration across STEM domains for elementary grade students. We introduce ViMAP-Tangible, a socio-technically distributed computational learning environment, which integrates ultrasonic sensors with the ViMAP visual programming language using a distributed computation infrastructure. In this paper, we report a study in which 3 rd and 4 th grade students used ViMAP-Tangible to engage in collaborative design-based activities in order to invent "drawing machines" for generating geometric shapes. The curricular activities integrate engineering practices such as user-centered design, mathematical reasoning about multiplication, rates and fractions, and physical science concepts central to learning Newtonian mechanics. We identify the key affordances of the learning environment and our pedagogical approach in terms of the relationship between the structural elements of students' physical constructions and computational models, and their learning outcomes, both in terms of computational thinking, and the domain-specific, mathematical and scientific knowledge that they began developing.

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“…2015 Due to their reactive nature, smart environments often rely on event-based solutions. Event-ConditionAction (ECA) rules are usually preferred for these specifications [27], [40], and several studies reveal that ECA rules are easily understood by users with no programming knowledge [17], [22], [32]. However, the existing ECA rule-based approaches for specifying behavior either tend to minimize the expressiveness of the language in order to make it understandable to users or restrict highly expressive language to professional developers or skilled users.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Customizing smart environments: A tabletop approach

Pons

Catalá

Jaén

2015

AIS

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Abstract. Smart environments are becoming a reality in our society and the number of intelligent devices integrated in these spaces is increasing very rapidly. As the combination of intelligent elements will open a wide range of new opportunities to make our lives easier, final users should be provided with a simplified method of handling complex intelligent features. Specifying behavior in these environments can be difficult for non-experts, so that more efforts should be directed towards easing the customization tasks. This work presents an entirely visual rule editor based on dataflow expressions for interactive tabletops which allows behavior to be specified in smart environments. An experiment was carried out aimed at evaluating the usability of the editor in terms of non-programmers' understanding of the abstractions and concepts involved in the rule model, ease of use of the proposed visual interface and the suitability of the interaction mechanisms implemented in the editing tool. The study revealed that users with no previous programming experience were able to master the proposed rule model and editing tool for specifying behavior in the context of a smart home, even though some minor usability issues were detected.

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Lowering the Barriers to Programming: A Survey of Programming Environments and Languages for Novice Programmers

Cited by 266 publications

References 0 publications

Effective compiler error message enhancement for novice programming students

Effective compiler error message enhancement for novice programming students

Integrated STEM in Elementary Grades Using Distributed Agent-based Computation

Customizing smart environments: A tabletop approach

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