Towards Supporting Programming Education at Scale via Live Streaming

Abstract

Live streaming, which allows streamers to broadcast their work to live viewers, is an emerging practice for teaching and learning computer programming. Participation in live streaming is growing rapidly, despite several apparent challenges, such as a general lack of training in pedagogy among streamers and scarce signals about a stream's characteristics (e.g., difficulty, style, and usefulness) to help viewers decide what to watch. To understand why people choose to participate in live streaming for teaching or learning programming, and how they cope with both apparent and non-obvious challenges, we interviewed 14 streamers and viewers about their experience with live streaming programming. Among other results, we found that the casual and impromptu nature of live streaming makes it easier to prepare than pre-recorded videos, and viewers have the opportunity to shape the content and learning experience via real-time communication with both the streamer and each other. Nonetheless, we identified several challenges that limit the potential of live streaming as a learning medium. For example, streamers voiced privacy and harassment concerns, and existing streaming platforms do not adequately support viewer-streamer interactions, adaptive learning, and discovery and selection of streaming content. Based on these findings, we suggest specialized tools to facilitate knowledge sharing among people teaching and learning computer programming online, and we offer design recommendations that promote a healthy, safe, and engaging learning environment.

"It Feels Like Being Locked in A Cage": Understanding Blind or Low Vision Streamers' Perceptions of Content Curation Algorithms

“…Due to the surge of live-streaming, an increasing number of studies investigated users' live-streaming practices on social media platforms. Prior research indicated that people from a variety of professions actively streamed online, such as professional streamers [53,74] , practitioners safeguarding Intangible Cultural Heritage (ICH) [50] , programmers [15,32] , university instructors [16,32] , students preparing for specific tests [72] , community leaders and reporters [22] .…”

“…For instance, Chen et al [15] indicated that programmers chose live-streaming to share programming knowledge and skills. Some studies also examined a wide range of live-streaming practices, including pan entertainment [53] , goods selling [35,53] , online education [15,16,27,32,53] , personal story sharing [53] , intangible culture promotion [50,53], eating [3], outdoor activities (e.g. traveling, adventures) [51,66], and gaming [66,74].…”

“…The prevalence of more affordable high-speed internet and high-resolution cameras on mobile devices has enabled widespread live-streaming practices on the platforms like Tiktok, Twitch, and Youtube. Streamers share a wide range of live videos regarding pan entertainment [53], goods selling [35,53], education content [15,16,27,32,53], gaming [66,74], and intangible culture heritage [50]. The ubiquity of live-streaming also attracts people with different abilities to engage, such as people with disabilities.…”

The Design Space of Livestreaming Equipment Setups: Tradeoffs, Challenges, and Opportunities

“…1) Some focus on one specifc domain that is popular amongst livestreamers, usually conducting surveys or interviews with both streamers and viewers in that domain. Popular domains of study include computer gaming [34,44,47,53,55], digital art [23], computer programming [2,9,20,21], online education [8,10,13,21,26], and IRL (In Real Life -e.g., walking around) mobile streams [57] to showcase outdoors scenery [37] and preserve cultural heritage [36]. We were motivated by this prior work to include several popular streaming domains in our video content analysis, most notably gaming, digital art, and programming.…”

“…Millions of people now use platforms like Twitch and YouTube to broadcast themselves live as they are playing games [34,44,47,53,55], making digital art [23], programming [2,9,20,21], and doing other activities. Since these people are acting as single-person live video production crews, a big challenge for aspiring livestreamers is fguring out what sorts of equipment they need in order to produce a compelling stream given their budget constraints.…”