Personifying programming tool feedback improves novice programmers' learning

Abstract

Many novice programmers view programming tools as allknowing, infallible authorities about what is right and wrong about code. This misconception is particularly detrimental to beginners, who may view the cold, terse, and often judgmental errors from compilers as a sign of personal failure. It is possible, however, that attributing this failure to the computer, rather than the learner, may improve learners' motivation to program. To test this hypothesis, we present Gidget, a game where the eponymous robot protagonist is cast as a fallible character that blames itself for not being able to correctly write code to complete its missions. Players learn programming by working with Gidget to debug its problematic code. In a two-condition controlled experiment, we manipulated Gidget's level of personification in: communication style, sound effects, and image. We tested our game with 116 self-described novice programmers recruited on Amazon's Mechanical Turk and found that, when given the option to quit at any time, those in the experimental condition (with a personable Gidget) completed significantly more levels in a similar amount of time. Participants in the control and experimental groups played the game for an average time of 39.4 minutes (SD=34.3) and 50.1 minutes (SD=42.6) respectively. These finding suggest that how programming tool feedback is portrayed to learners can have a significant impact on motivation to program and learning success.

Principles of a debugging-first puzzle game for computing education

“…Principle P3-fallible has previously been shown [17] to be important in helping learners focus on their progress rather than on their failures/mistakes, and it seemed to promote engagement among our camp participants. However, we also identified problem-solving antipatterns that suggest that participants trusted the original code too much and did not scrutinizing it thoroughly.…”

“…Descriptions of earlier versions of Gidget have been reported elsewhere [17,18,19], so here we focus only on the details needed for this paper.…”

“…This framing can contribute to learners' sense of failure if they do not initially succeed [17]. For females (or males) who view the culture of computing as elitist and view themselves as not good enough [13,21], feedback such as their programs being called "invalid" can be discouraging.…”

Game Development for Computer Science Education

“…[101]). Lee and Ko [76] used this theory as the foundation for their research into play, showing that the personification of a compiler could be used to improve motivation when learning computer programming. Further to this, other games such as RAPUNSEL have been shown to improve learner's programming self-efficacy [99].…”

Evaluation of a Frame-based Programming Editor

“…Traver [31] suggests a number of guiding principles for compiler messages, including clarity and brevity, specificity and locality, which also support this notion. Lee and Ko [21] found that personifying compiler feedback using a robot agent improved novices' completion of levels in a programming game, suggesting that some improvement of error messages is possible.…”