On the Effect of a Pilot Coding Education Support System for Complex Problem Solving Tasks

Abstract

In the programming education, there is a great need of a teaching support system that can support the learner in the programming process regardless of the computer language due to instructor’s difficulty of checking the progress of learners in real-time. Its importance is especially important in lower grade coding classes such as in K-12 education because they are not used to coding and so simple problems can be regarded as complex problems. For this, a pilot coding education support system based on Levenshtein distance algorithm which shows learners’ progress to given solution in real-time was developed in order to help learners to solve complex problems easily, and the learners’ motivation and self-efficacy was measured for estimating the usefulness of developed system targeting elementary school students. When the learners use the developed system, it was found that a statistically significant difference appears in the sub-factors of learning motivation compared with traditional class teaching environments. Among the sub-factors of self-efficacy, the efficacy dimension showed statistically significant difference too.