Debugging is a core skill required by programmers, yet we know little about how to effectively teach the process of debugging. The challenges of learning debugging are compounded for novices who lack experience and are still learning the tools they need to program effectively. In this work, we report a case study in which we used a think-aloud…

We investigate conditions in which novices make some reference errors when programming. We asked students from introductory programming courses to perform a simple code-writing task that required constructing references to objects and their attributes. By experimentally manipulating the nature of the attributes in the tasks, from identifying…

A lack of diversity in the computing field has existed for several decades, and although female participation in computing remains low, outreach programs attempting to address the situation are now quite numerous. To begin to understand whether or not these past activities have had long-term impact, we conducted a systematic literature review.…

Specifying file references for hypertext links is an elementary competence that nevertheless draws upon core computational thinking concepts such as tree traversal and the distinction between relative and absolute references. In this article we explore the learning effects of different instructional strategies in the context of an introductory…