TY - GEN
T1 - Thinking out of the Box
T2 - 13th Workshop in Primary and Secondary Computing Education, WiPSCE 2018
AU - Hermans, Felienne
AU - Swidan, Alaaeddin
AU - Aivaloglou, Efthimia
AU - Smit, Marileen
PY - 2018/10/4
Y1 - 2018/10/4
N2 - When teaching novices programming, misconceptions can occur. Misconception are incorrect beliefs about certain programming concept. For example, some novices think that a variable can hold multiple values, in the case of two consecutive assignment statements, such as x = 5; x = 7. While explaining variables introductory materials often use the metaphor of a box for a variable, which might contribute to the 'multiple values' hypothesis. To investigate this, we design and run a controlled experiment with 496 novice programmers, both children and adults. Half of our participants receive an introductory programming lesson in which we explain a variable as a box, while the other half of participants receive the explanation of a variable as being a label. They are subsequently questioned about their understanding of variables. Our results show that, for the simple questions involving one assignment, the box group performs better. However, for questions involving the misconception - with two consecutive assignment statements - the label group outperforms the box group. This however primarily occurs when considering variables of type string, for integers subjects interpret the statements as numeric values to be added.
AB - When teaching novices programming, misconceptions can occur. Misconception are incorrect beliefs about certain programming concept. For example, some novices think that a variable can hold multiple values, in the case of two consecutive assignment statements, such as x = 5; x = 7. While explaining variables introductory materials often use the metaphor of a box for a variable, which might contribute to the 'multiple values' hypothesis. To investigate this, we design and run a controlled experiment with 496 novice programmers, both children and adults. Half of our participants receive an introductory programming lesson in which we explain a variable as a box, while the other half of participants receive the explanation of a variable as being a label. They are subsequently questioned about their understanding of variables. Our results show that, for the simple questions involving one assignment, the box group performs better. However, for questions involving the misconception - with two consecutive assignment statements - the label group outperforms the box group. This however primarily occurs when considering variables of type string, for integers subjects interpret the statements as numeric values to be added.
KW - Misconceptions
KW - Programming education
KW - Scratch
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85056715872&partnerID=8YFLogxK
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/citedby.url?scp=85056715872&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1145/3265757.3265765
DO - 10.1145/3265757.3265765
M3 - Conference contribution
AN - SCOPUS:85056715872
T3 - ACM International Conference Proceeding Series
BT - Proceedings of the 13th Workshop in Primary and Secondary Computing Education, WiPSCE 2018
A2 - Cutts, Quintin
A2 - Muhling, Andreas
PB - Association for Computing Machinery
Y2 - 4 October 2018 through 6 October 2018
ER -