Scaffolding C++ on smart phone for novice learners of programming
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Date
2016
Authors
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Publisher
University of Management and Technology Lahore
Abstract
Learning programming has been a tedious and challenging task for the novice programmers of high school and university level. If timely guidance is not provided to the learners then dropout from programming courses is increased and overall low score by students is achieved. If Scaffolding (support) is being provided to students then results can be optimistic for the novice learners of programming that can not only provide them guidance but will also increase their learning ability with constructive interest.
Scaffolding is guidance, the support provided to learners in the form of tools, curriculum, pedagogy, advice or any tutorial to accomplish a task which learner would not have been able to do without any support. As the learner make the transition from naïve to expert, the guidance provided to learner starts to fade off.
The use of Smart phones in Pakistanis on the rise, especially in the young generation of the country. This thing motivates us to build a programming environment in C++ for novice learners of computer programming. In order to design this application, a comprehensive scaffolding framework has been proposed which helps novices for learning computer programming on handheld devices. To provide proof of concept, a programming environment for novice learners outside the classroom/lab is provided, which is built on the scaffolding principles. Most of the Pakistani universities use C++ as a first programming language in their fundamental computer programming course. We implemented the proof of concept in the form of a programming environment on Smart phones that provides scaffolding (Support) to learners.
This application is specifically created for the android platform because of the low cost of an android phone and large audience of this platform. Two experiments have been conducted in order to understand the effectiveness of the construction of programs on Smartphones in C++. Participants from both universities UOS and UOL participated in the experimentation. Our designed first draft of the application named “Scaffoldy” was compared with a non-scaffolded system taken from Google Play store. A study was evaluated using different parameters such as task success, efficiency, a time required for the task, number of errors and learnability.
Learners were provided scaffolding in the “Scaffoldy” in the form of static and automatic scaffolding. Learners showed a great response to the support provided to them in both the forms. Specifically programming with parts, default statements and hints were highly appraised by the participants in the experiment. Learners found practising with errors feature highly effective as they were able to learn about new errors. Their error finding skill enhanced greatly as they practised error finding feature. “Scaffoldy” showed better results in term of attempted and completed tasks as compared to a non-scaffolded system. Learners showed fruitful results specifically in terms of efficiency, task success and learning from their errors. The feedback from learner suggested that working with the “Scaffoldy” was helpful for them and learners adopted to scaffolding techniques again, when scaffolding provided to them was faded away.
Description
Supervised by:Dr. Muhammad Shoaib Farooq
Keywords
Smart phones, Programming environment, MS Thesis