Using Code Snippets to Teach Programming Languages
Joshua Akingbade, Jianhua Yang, Mir Seyedebrahimi

TL;DR
This paper investigates how code snippets can be effectively used in teaching programming languages, analyzing qualities like length, interactivity, and explanation to improve educational resources.
Contribution
It provides a pedagogical framework for designing effective programming tutorials using code snippets based on empirical evaluation.
Findings
Code length affects learner engagement
Interactivity enhances understanding
Quality of explanation is crucial for learning
Abstract
Coding is a fundamental skill required in the engineering discipline, and much work exists exploring better ways of teaching coding in the higher education context. In particular, Code Snippets (CSs) are approved to be an effective way of introducing programming language units to students. CSs are portions of source code of varying size and content. They can be used in a myriad of ways, one of which is to teach the code they contain as well as its function. To further explore the use of CSs, a pedagogical summer internship project was set up at the Warwick Manufacturing Group (WMG). The scope of the considerations for the study derives from an educational standpoint. Within the evaluations made, the focus was primarily given to pieces of information which proved to provide evidence pertaining to the methodology involved in either teaching or developing teaching materials. By taking the…
Peer Reviews
No public reviews on file for this paper yet. If you reviewed it on a platform where reviews are public (OpenReview, ICLR, NeurIPS, ICML), you can paste yours below so the community can read it here.
Videos
No videos yet. Explain this paper in a talk, walkthrough, or lecture? Add one.
