The Stress of Improvisation: Instructors' Perspectives on Live Coding in Programming Classes

TL;DR

This paper explores instructors' challenges with live coding in programming classes, highlighting cognitive and psychological stresses, and suggests enhancements to IDEs to improve the teaching experience.

Contribution

It provides empirical insights into the obstacles faced by instructors during live coding and proposes technological augmentations to support them.

Findings

Live coding increases instructor stress compared to static presentations.

Unpredictability of live coding affects time management and student engagement.

Proposed IDE enhancements could mitigate instructor stress.

Abstract

Live coding is a pedagogical technique in which an instructor writes and executes code in front of students to impart skills like incremental development and debugging. Although live coding offers many benefits, instructors face many challenges in the classroom, like cognitive challenges and psychological stress, most of which have yet to be formally studied. To understand the obstacles faced by instructors in CS classes, we conducted (1) a formative interview with five teaching assistants in exercise sessions and (2) a contextual inquiry study with four lecturers for large-scale classes. We found that the improvisational and unpredictable nature of live coding makes it difficult for instructors to manage their time and keep students engaged, resulting in more mental stress than presenting static slides. We discussed opportunities for augmenting existing IDEs and presentation setups to help enhance live coding experience.