Exploring the Impact of Quizzes Interleaved with Write-Code Tasks in Elementary-Level Visual Programming

TL;DR

This study investigates how different types of quizzes interleaved with elementary visual programming tasks affect learning, finding that richer quizzes improve post-learning utility in a large-scale K-8 study.

Contribution

It compares the impact of diverse versus simple quizzes within a visual programming curriculum, revealing that richer quizzes enhance post-learning utility.

Findings

Richer quizzes lead to higher post-learning utility.

Diverse quiz types improve learning outcomes.

Study involved 405 students in grades 6-7.

Abstract

We explore the role of quizzes in elementary visual programming domains popularly used for K-8 computing education. Prior work has studied various quiz types, such as fill-in-the-gap write-code questions. However, the overall impact of these quizzes is unclear: studies often show utility in the learning phase when enhanced with quizzes, though limited transfer of utility in the post-learning phase. In this paper, we aim to better understand the impact of different quiz types and whether quizzes focusing on diverse skills (e.g., code debugging and task design) would have higher utility. We design a study with Hour of Code: Maze Challenge by code.org as the base curriculum, interleaved with different quiz types. Specifically, we examine two learning groups: (i) HoC-ACE with diverse quizzes including solution tracing, code debugging, code equivalence, and task design; (ii) HoC-Fill with simple quizzes on solution finding. We conducted a large-scale study with 405 students in grades 6--7. Our results highlight that the curriculum enhanced with richer quizzes led to higher utility during the post-learning phase.