The Use of Python Tutor on Programming Laboratory Session: Student Perspectives

Abstract

Based on the fact that the impact of educational tools can only be accurately measured through student-centered evaluation, this paper proposes a long-term in-class evaluation for Python Tutor, a program visualization tool developed by Guo. The evaluation involves 53 students from 4 Basic Data Structure classes, which were held in the even semester of 2016/2017 academic year. It is conducted based on questionnaire survey asked to the students after they have used Python Tutor in their half of programming laboratory sessions. In general, there are three findings from this work. Firstly, Python Tutor helps students to complete programming laboratory tasks, specifically for Basic Data Structure material. Secondly, Python Tutor helps students to understand general programming aspects which are execution flow, variable content change, method invocation sequence, object reference, syntax error, and logic error. Finally, based on student perspectives, Python Tutor is a helpful tool positively affecting the students.