Evaluation of a Frame-based Programming Editor

Price, Thomas W. and Brown, Neil C.C. and Lipovac, Dragan and Barnes, Tiffany and Kölling, Michael (2016) Evaluation of a Frame-based Programming Editor. In: ICER 2016. 2016 ACM Conference on International Computing Education Research, 8-12 September 2016, Melbourne. (doi:https://doi.org/10.1145/2960310.2960319) (Full text available)

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Official URL https://doi.org/10.1145/2960310.2960319

Abstract

Frame-based editing is a novel way to edit programs, which claims to combine the benefits of textual and block-based programming. It combines structured ‘frames’ of preformatted code, designed to reduce the burden of syntax, with ‘slots’ that allow for efficient textual entry of expressions. We present an empirical evaluation of Stride, a frame-based language used in the Greenfoot IDE. We compare two groups of middle school students who worked on a short programming activity in Greenfoot, one using the original Java editor, and one using the Stride editor. We found that the two groups reported similarly low levels of frustration and high levels of satisfaction, but students using Stride progressed through the activity more quickly and completed more objectives. The Stride group also spent significantly less time making purely syntactic edits to their code and significantly less time with non-compilable code.

Item Type:	Conference or workshop item (Paper)
Subjects:	Q Science > QA Mathematics (inc Computing science) > QA 76 Software, computer programming, > QA76.76 Computer software
Divisions:	Faculties > Sciences > School of Computing Faculties > Sciences > School of Computing > Computing Education Group
Depositing User:	Neil Brown
Date Deposited:	12 Jul 2016 11:40 UTC
Last Modified:	16 Nov 2016 13:52 UTC
Resource URI:	https://kar.kent.ac.uk/id/eprint/56259 (The current URI for this page, for reference purposes)