Logo image
Back
Reading Hierarchies in Code: Assessment of a Basic Computational Skill
Conference proceeding   Open access

Reading Hierarchies in Code: Assessment of a Basic Computational Skill

Thomas Park, Meen Chul Kim, Sukrit Chhabra, Brian Lee and Andrea Forte
Proceedings of the 2016 ACM Conference on innovation and technology in computer science education, v 11-13-, pp 302-307
11 Jul 2016
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1145/2899415.2899435
url
https://doi.org/10.1145/2899415.2899435View
Published, Version of Record (VoR)Maybe Open Access (Publisher Bronze),  Open

Abstract

assessment computational thinking program comprehension web development
One of the skills that comprise computational thinking is the ability to read code and reason about the hierarchical relationships between different blocks, expressions, elements, or other types of nodes, depending on the language. In this study, we present three new instruments for assessing different aspects of reading hierarchies in code, including vocabulary, reasoning, and fluency. One of these instruments is Nester, an interactive tool we have designed to elicit mental models about the hierarchical structure of code in computing languages ranging from HTML, CSS, and LaTeX to JavaScript and Lisp. We describe a lab study in which we administered these instruments to 24 participants with varying degrees of web development experience. We report findings from this study, including participants' ability to define, reason about, and manipulate hierarchies in code, and the errors and misconceptions that relate to them. Finally, we discuss avenues for future work.

Metrics

22 Record Views
7 citations in Scopus

Details

Logo image