Novices' Learning Barriers When Using Code Examples in Open-Ended Programming

TL;DR

This study investigates the challenges novices face when using code examples in open-ended programming, identifying key barriers and proposing design opportunities to improve learning experiences.

Contribution

The paper introduces an empirical study of novices' learning barriers with code examples in open-ended programming and presents the deployment of a tool to analyze these challenges.

Findings

Identified decision, search, and integration barriers for novices.

Deployed Example Helper tool with 44 students in real classroom settings.

Discussed design opportunities to overcome learning barriers.

Abstract

Open-ended programming increases students' motivation by allowing them to solve authentic problems and connect programming to their own interests. However, such open-ended projects are also challenging, as they often encourage students to explore new programming features and attempt tasks that they have not learned before. Code examples are effective learning materials for students and are well-suited to supporting open-ended programming. However, there is little work to understand how novices learn with examples during open-ended programming, and few real-world deployments of such tools. In this paper, we explore novices' learning barriers when interacting with code examples during open-ended programming. We deployed Example Helper, a tool that offers galleries of code examples to search and use, with 44 novice students in an introductory programming classroom, working on an open-ended project in Snap. We found three high-level barriers that novices encountered when using examples: decision, search and integration barriers. We discuss how these barriers arise and design opportunities to address them.