Integrating Personalized Parsons Problems with Multi-Level Textual Explanations to Scaffold Code Writing

Fuente: arXiv
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Main Authors: Hou, Xinying, Ericson, Barbara J., Wang, Xu
Format: Preprint
Published: 2024
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author Hou, Xinying
Ericson, Barbara J.
Wang, Xu
author_facet Hou, Xinying
Ericson, Barbara J.
Wang, Xu
contents Novice programmers need to write basic code as part of the learning process, but they often face difficulties. To assist struggling students, we recently implemented personalized Parsons problems, which are code puzzles where students arrange blocks of code to solve them, as pop-up scaffolding. Students found them to be more engaging and preferred them for learning, instead of simply receiving the correct answer, such as the response they might get from generative AI tools like ChatGPT. However, a drawback of using Parsons problems as scaffolding is that students may be able to put the code blocks in the correct order without fully understanding the rationale of the correct solution. As a result, the learning benefits of scaffolding are compromised. Can we improve the understanding of personalized Parsons scaffolding by providing textual code explanations? In this poster, we propose a design that incorporates multiple levels of textual explanations for the Parsons problems. This design will be used for future technical evaluations and classroom experiments. These experiments will explore the effectiveness of adding textual explanations to Parsons problems to improve instructional benefits.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2401_03144
institution arXiv
publishDate 2024
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Integrating Personalized Parsons Problems with Multi-Level Textual Explanations to Scaffold Code Writing
Hou, Xinying
Ericson, Barbara J.
Wang, Xu
Computers and Society
Human-Computer Interaction
Novice programmers need to write basic code as part of the learning process, but they often face difficulties. To assist struggling students, we recently implemented personalized Parsons problems, which are code puzzles where students arrange blocks of code to solve them, as pop-up scaffolding. Students found them to be more engaging and preferred them for learning, instead of simply receiving the correct answer, such as the response they might get from generative AI tools like ChatGPT. However, a drawback of using Parsons problems as scaffolding is that students may be able to put the code blocks in the correct order without fully understanding the rationale of the correct solution. As a result, the learning benefits of scaffolding are compromised. Can we improve the understanding of personalized Parsons scaffolding by providing textual code explanations? In this poster, we propose a design that incorporates multiple levels of textual explanations for the Parsons problems. This design will be used for future technical evaluations and classroom experiments. These experiments will explore the effectiveness of adding textual explanations to Parsons problems to improve instructional benefits.
title Integrating Personalized Parsons Problems with Multi-Level Textual Explanations to Scaffold Code Writing
topic Computers and Society
Human-Computer Interaction
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2401.03144