Fundamental Programming Concepts Research Articles

From Blocks to Text: Bridging Programming Misconceptions

The use of a pedagogical approach mediated transfer with the bridging method has been successful in facilitating the transitions from block-based to text-based programming languages. Nevertheless, there is a lack of research addressing the impact of this transfer on programming misconceptions during the transition. The way programming concepts are taught to K-12 learners can later result in misconceptions for adult learners. The main objective was to examine the impact of mediated transfer using the bridging method pedagogical approach on the prevalence of programming misconceptions. We conducted a quasi-experimental study in school settings during informatics (computer science) classes among 163 sixth-grade students. The control group received traditional programming lectures using the text-based programming language, Python. Conversely, the experimental group utilized a mediated transfer pedagogical approach by starting with the block-based programming language MakeCode for micro:bit before transitioning to the text-based Python. Our findings indicate that the experimental group significantly reduced programming misconceptions in fundamental programming concepts: variables, sequencing, selection, and loops - compared to the control group. This suggests that the use of block-based programming language as an initial step in programming education, followed by a structured transition to text-based programming language, can effectively mitigate common misconceptions among K-12 learners.

Pyrates: Design and Evaluation of a Serious Game Aimed at Introducing Python Programming and Easing the Transition from Blocks

This article reports on a design-based research study centered on the conception and the assessment of the Pyrates application. This online serious game aims at introducing Python programming to K–12 students while easing the transition from block-based to text-based languages. After we present the various aspects underlying the block-to-text transition as well as the related existing applications, we describe the design of Pyrates . First, we built the levels of the game to deal with the different fundamental concepts of programming in a constructivist approach. Next, we were inspired by advantageous characteristics of block-based programming editors to create the editing environment of Pyrates . To assess this conception, we tested the application in eight classrooms with 240 French 14–15 years old students. Students’ activity traces have been collected and were augmented by a qualitative online survey. By analyzing this dataset, we showed that the levels’ design generally allows to apprehend the targeted concepts consistently with the constructivist principles. Regarding the editing environment, we established that it supports the block-to-text transition in several aspects: concept transposition (general models and illustrative examples), reduction of errors (beginners aware syntax analyzer), command catalog (programming memo for discovery and syntax reference), and program composition (copy button that limits keyboarding). Finally, Pyrates , which has already been played over 140,000 times, offers practitioners an environment that facilitates the transition from blocks to text, as well as a serious game to master the fundamental concepts of Python programming, and novel avenues to follow for tool designers.

Studying the effects of educational games on cultivating computational thinking skills to primary school students: a systematic literature review

AbstractThis article presents a systematic literature review (SLR) on the effects of serious games, or more specifically educational games that aim to teach Computational Thinking (CT) skills to primary school students. Sixty one studies from various data sources were evaluated based on the CT skills and programming concepts addressed, the evaluation instruments used, the target audience, the learning outcomes and their results. The findings of the studies on the efficiency or impact of educational games on the acquisition of the proposed topics were positive, indicating that educational programming games can help primary school students develop CT skills or understand fundamental programming concepts. Additionally, the results suggest a general positive attitude towards the use of an educational game for learning purposes, while students perceive games as a great motivator for engaging in CT activities. Finally, the research discusses research gaps and shortages, as well as methodological limitations and recommendations for future work in the relevant domain.

Improving CS1 Programming Learning with Visual Execution Environments

Students in their first year of computer science (CS1) at universities typically struggle to grasp fundamental programming concepts. This paper discusses research carried out using a Java-based visual execution environment (VEE) to introduce fundamental programming concepts to CS1 students. The VEE guides beginner programmers through the fundamentals of programming, utilizing visual metaphors to explain and direct interactive tasks implemented in Java. The study’s goal was to determine if the use of the VEE in the instruction of a group of 63 CS1 students from four different groups enrolled in two academic institutions (based in Madrid, Spain and Galway, Ireland) results in an improvement in their grasp of fundamental programming concepts. The programming concepts covered included those typically found in an introductory programming course, e.g., input and output, conditionals, loops, functions, arrays, recursion, and files. A secondary goal of this research was to examine if the use of the VEE enhances students’ understanding of particular concepts more than others, i.e., whether there exists a topic-dependent benefit to the use of the VEE. The results of the study found that use of the VEE in the instruction of these students resulted in a significant improvement in their grasp of fundamental programming concepts compared with a control group who received instruction without the use of the VEE. The study also found a pronounced improvement in the students’ grasp of particular concepts (e.g., operators, conditionals, and loops), suggesting the presence of a topic-dependent benefit to the use of the VEE.

Mobile application with augmented reality applied to programming learning

Augmented Reality (AR) is a technology that allows users to have interactive experiences between themselves, the physical world, and the virtual world through the use of digital devices that have a digital camera, such as smartphones, tablets, desktop computers, or laptops. AR has various applications such as entertainment, advertising and marketing, medicine, architecture, engineering, tourism, e-commerce, or education; in the latter, students can visualize different concepts of programming fundamentals or object-oriented programming. The objective of this project is to create a mobile application applying augmented reality to the fundamental concepts of programming so that students can improve their understanding and retention of syntax and examples of terms used in Java. The application is focused on control structures, conditionals, classes, methods, constructors, objects, and arrays. Searching for concepts on the internet, physical or electronic books, or even with classmates, can take up to 5 minutes, with this application, it is possible to see the structure and/or examples in a matter of seconds, besides having the advantage that it does not require internet connectivity.

An intuitive approach to inventory control with optimal stopping

In this research note, we show that a simple application of Breiman’s work on optimal stopping in 1964 leads to an elementary proof that (s,S) policies minimize the long-run average cost for periodic-review inventory control problems. The method of proof is appealing as it only depends on the fundamental concepts of renewal-reward processes, optimal stopping, dynamic programming, and root-finding. Moreover, it leads to an efficient algorithm to compute the optimal policy parameters. If Breiman’s paper would have received the attention it deserved, computational methods dealing with (s,S)-policies would have been found about three decades earlier than the famous algorithm of Zheng and Federgruen (1991).

Source Code Analysis in Programming Education: Evaluating Learning Content with Self-Organizing Maps

Due to the everchanging and evergrowing nature of programming technologies, the gap between the programming industry’s needs and the educational capabilities of both formal and informal educational environments has never been wider. However, the need to learn computer programming has never been greater, regardless of the motivation behind it. The number of programming concepts to be taught is increasing over time, while the amount of time available for education and training usually remains the same. The objective of this research was to analyze the source codes used in many educational systems to teach fundamental programming concepts to learners, regardless of their prior experience in programming. A total of 25 repositories containing 3882 Python modules were collected for the analysis. Through self-organization of the collected content, we obtained very compelling results about code structure, distribution, and differences. Based on those results, we concluded that Self-Organizing Maps are a powerful tool for both content and knowledge management, because they can highlight problems in the curriculum’s density as well as transparently indicate which programming concepts it has successfully observed and learned to recognize. Based on the level of transparency exhibited by Self-Organizing Maps, it is safe to say that they could be used in future research to enhance both human and machine learning of computer programming. By achieving this level of transparency, such an Artificial Intelligence system would be able to assist in overall computer programming education by communicating what should be taught, what needs to be learned, and what is known.

A Chatbot to Facilitate Student Learning in a Programming 1 Course

The programming domain is a challenging field of study for most novice programmers. Novices have to learn different skills in the Programming 1 course at the same time. This study prepared and introduced a chatbot in the course. The chatbot emphasizes syntax and semantics, problem solving strategies, course details, and common programming syntax and semantics errors. The influence of the chatbot on students' learning in the Programming 1 course was determined by performing a survey and analyzing the final grades of the course. The survey results reveal that the chatbot approach was appreciated by both female and male students in the Programming 1 course. The chatbot helped novices in comprehending the fundamental programming concepts and understanding common syntax and semantic errors. The analysis of final grades shows that female students perform well in the medium and low achiever categories, and male students show better performance in the high achiever category.

Fostering the Learning Process in a Programming Course With a Chatbot

Novice programmers have to focus and learn different programming skills in programming 1 course at the same time. Therefore, they need more support to answer their queries related to the programming domain. This study developed and offered a chatbot in programming 1 course. The chatbot focuses on course details, fundamental programming concepts, and common programming errors. The perception of programming 1 students and instructors regarding the chatbot in programming education were collected through the survey and focus group respectively. The results of the students’ survey revealed that the chatbot supports students in learning programming and common programming errors in the course. The focus group participants agreed that the chatbot provides one-to-one teaching experience to novices. The chatbot serves as a virtual teaching assistant and promotes students-centered learning. The focus group participants also agreed that the chatbot approach provides additional support to students in their learning process of programming domain.

Has the time come to teach parallel programming to secondary school students?

Today, almost every computer has at least one multicore processor. To remain in stride with hardware developments, numerous university faculties oriented towards computer science have introduced parallel programming as an integral part of their courses. The question is, given the availability of parallel architectures, and considering future trends in programming, whether it is time for parallel programming to also become an integral part of the informatics curriculum in secondary schools? This paper presents research conducted in three schools in Croatia over several school years. A total of 162 students from the science-mathematic high schools participated in the research. The results, based on student evaluations, suggest that this course content is equally interesting and somewhat more difficult, and perceived as equally useful as other course content taught to students. Moreover, the findings indicate that students can understand and later apply some of the fundamental concepts of parallel programming.

The Effect of Media Literacy and Cognitive Ability on Recognition Laptop-Based Media for Children

Education has long been the target of utopian interventions, and with technological interventions, offering to change drastically or even eliminates classroom-based learning, traditional education research needs to focus on introducing technology tools at an early age through media literacy. The purpose of this study was to determine the effect of media literacy and cognitive abilities on the introduction of laptop-based media. This study used a quasi-experimental design involving 46 children. Data collection techniques through tests and data collection tools using statement sheets, which were processed using t-test. The results showed that the experimental class using the original laptop media had a high average value of 86.66 compared to the control class using the imitation laptop media which had a value of 81.66. There is a significant effect of media literacy and cognitive ability on the introduction of laptop-based media in children. On the introduction of laptop-based media in children, media literacy and cognitive capacities can have a big impact. The comparison of the average value of the control and experimental classes demonstrates this. When children are introduced to media via a genuine laptop, they become more excited and engaged in the experimental lesson.
 Keywords: media literacy, cognitive ability, laptop-based learning media

From "Hello, World!" to Fourier transformations: Teaching linguistics undergraduates to code in ten weeks or less

I used Backward Design to scaffold ten weeks of assignments that taught students how to perform sine wave vowel synthesis and a Fourier transformation approximation using just a few fundamental programming concepts. This strategy gave all students, regardless of their previous programming experience, the opportunity to implement algorithms related to core concepts in phonetics and speech technology. Reflecting on the course, it seems that the coding assignments were generally well-received by students and contributed to students programming something complex and meaningful.

Discovery Model Based on Analogies for Teaching Computer Programming

Teaching the fundamentals of computer programming in a first course (CS1) is a complex activity for the professor and is also a challenge for them. Nowadays, there are several teaching strategies for dealing with a CS1 at the university, one of which is the use of analogies to support the abstraction process that a student needs to carry for the appropriation of fundamental concepts. This article presents the results of applying a discovery model that allowed for the extraction of patterns, linguistic analysis, textual analytics, and linked data when using analogies for teaching the fundamental concepts of programming by professors in a CS1 in university programs that train software developers. For that reason, a discovery model based on machine learning and text mining was proposed using natural language processing techniques for semantic vector space modeling, distributional semantics, and the generation of synthetic data. The discovery process was carried out using nine supervised learning methods, three unsupervised learning methods, and one semi-supervised learning method involving linguistic analysis techniques, text analytics, and linked data. The main findings showed that professors include keywords, which are part of the technical computer terminology, in the form of verbs in the statement of the analogy and combine them in quantitative contexts with neutral or positive phrases, where numerical examples, cooking recipes, and games were the most used categories. Finally, a structure is proposed for the construction of analogies to teach programming concepts and this was validated by the professors and students.

Tactile Scratch Electronic Block System: Expanding Opportunities for Younger Children to Learn Programming

This paper introduces our work on the development of a novel system for applying MIT’s Scratch to teaching classes of four to eight-years-old students. Scratch is a visual, block-based programming language designed for anybody to create a computer program without the worry of syntax errors by assembling icon-like command blocks. However, four to eight-year-old students have trouble using a computer mouse or keyboard and face difficulties when trying Scratch programming. This research developed a tactile, electronic block system that allows students to manipulate physical objects in a tangible way to conduct their programming tasks. The system consists of a Scratch simulator and physical, electronic blocks embodying the Scratch user interface shapes. We taught programming to the classes of second-grade elementary school students (eight-years-old) using our system. The results are encouraging. Our subjects’ interest in programming improved from 3.23 to 4.0 out of the scale of 5, and fifteen students out of twenty five were able to solve nine questions on sequence, loop, and control structure successfully, which are fundamental concepts of programming.

Answer First or Google First? Using the Internet in ways that Enhance, not Impair, One’s Subsequent Retention of Needed Information

Technological advances have given us tools—Google, in particular—that can both augment and free up our cognitive resources. Research has demonstrated, however, that some cognitive costs may arise from our reliance on such external memories. We examined whether pretesting—asking participants to solve a problem before consulting Google for needed information—can enhance participants’ subsequent recall for the searched-for content as well as for relevant information previously studied. Two groups of participants, one with no programming knowledge and one with some programming knowledge, learned several fundamental programming concepts in the context of a problem-solving task. On a later multiple-choice test with transfer questions, participants who attempted the task before consulting Google for help out-performed participants who were allowed to search Google right away. The benefit of attempting to solve the problem before googling appeared larger with some degree of programming experience, consistent with the notion that some prior knowledge can help learners integrate new information in ways that benefit its learning as well as that of previously studied related information.

Patterns in Mainstream Programming Games


 
 
 Studies have found serious games to be good tools for programming education. As an outcome from such research, several game solutions for learning computer programming have appeared. Most of these games are only used in the research field where only a few are published and made available for the public. There are however numerous examples of programming games in commercial stores that have reached a large audience.This article presents a systematic review of publicly available and popular programming games. It analyses which fundamental software development concepts, as defined by the ACM/IEEE Computer Science Curricula, are represented in these games and identifies game design patterns used to represent these concepts.This study shows that fundamental programming concepts and programming methods have a good representation in mainstream games. There is however a lack of games addressing data structures, algorithms and design. There is a strong domination of puzzle games. Only two of the 20 studied games belong to a different genre. The eleven game design patterns identified in this study have potential to contribute to future efforts in creating engaging serious games for programming education.
 
 

The Effect of Memorization on the Retention and Learning Acquisition of Programming Practice

To foster a skillful IT workforce, it is crucial to balance fundamental programming concepts and advanced coding skills that students can apply to complicated real-life problems. One of the biggest deterrents for students to succeed in a computing field is the struggle with learning new programming languages and how to code effectively. Based on Bloom’s Taxonomy, this study develops a holistic view of the student learning process in computer programming and suggests the pedagogical insights to improve students’ programming skills. This study shows the positive impact of memorization toward learning in fundamental programming class and its potential linkage to improved retention in computing programs.

Designing an advanced programming class in Java that incorporates web database applications

The computing curriculum includes many programming courses that introduce students to fundamental programming concepts. This paper provides a course design for an advanced programming class in Java...

JAVANT-GARDE: A Cross-Platform Serious Game for an Introduction to Programming With Java

Background. Programming is widely known to be a cognitively demanding field. Learning programming can be a strenuous task without the proper guidance and methodology. Students often face difficulties in understanding even the most basic and fundamental concepts of programming, leading to their confusion and disappointment. Serious games for programming have the potential to alleviate students’ difficulties with programming. Aim. This article introduces a new serious game named jAVANT-GARDE which aims to educate the player on the basic concepts of programming and object-oriented programming through Java. By design, the game is suitable for everyone, even for players with no previous knowledge of programming. This article aims to present important information regarding the design, implementation and pilot evaluation of jAVANT-GARDE. Method. The game was evaluated by 42 high school students (age 16-17) in terms of perceived player experience and short-term learning. The participants played the game for one hour in the school lab and then answered a questionnaire based on the MEEGA+ framework. Results. Students evaluated positively the game in terms of its usability, confidence in playing the game, challenge, satisfaction, fun, focused attention and relevance. Moreover, the majority of students stated that would prefer learning programming with this game to learning through other teaching methods. Conclusions. The results of the pilot study and students’ replies in the questionnaire are rather positive. This gives us the initiative to proceed with studying the effect of the game in long-term learning of programming concepts.

Visual programming language environment for different IoT and robotics platforms in computer science education

This study presents the authors’ recent research and application of a new visual programming language and its development environment: VIPLE (Visual IoT/Robotics Programming Language Environment) at Arizona State University (ASU). ASU VIPLE supports a variety of IoT devices and robots based on an open architecture. Based on computational thinking, VIPLE supports the integration of engineering design process, workflow, fundamental programming concepts, control flow, parallel computing, event-driven programming, and service-oriented computing seamlessly into a wide range of curricula, such as introduction to computing, introduction to engineering, service-oriented computing, and software integration. It is actively used at ASU in several sections of FSE 100: Introduction to Engineering and in CSE 446: Software Integration and Engineering, as well as in several other universities worldwide.