TY - CHAP
T1 - Transitioning from Blocks to Text
AU - Brown, Neil C.C.
AU - Kölling, Michael
AU - Kyfonidis, Charalampos
AU - Weill-Tessier, Pierre
N1 - Publisher Copyright:
© 2022 Owner/Author.
PY - 2022/3/3
Y1 - 2022/3/3
N2 - Block-based programming languages are very popular for introducing young novices to programming. The drag-and-drop interface, with large palettes of blocks, aids initial manipulation and discoverability. When novices continue with programming, they will likely do so by transitioning to a text-based programming language where they are confronted by a blank page and a blinking cursor. The move can be quite a shock. It is important for educators to be able to help with this transition. There are several elements to managing this transition: pedagogical, or tool-based. There exist tools that can show blocks and text, and there also exist tools occupying a middle space between blocks and text. In this session we will give a programming environment designer's view of why this transition is so difficult and explain how we attempted to solve the challenge in our own hybrid programming systems. We will then invite opinions from the audience on how they conquer the transition using tools and/or pedagogical approaches.
AB - Block-based programming languages are very popular for introducing young novices to programming. The drag-and-drop interface, with large palettes of blocks, aids initial manipulation and discoverability. When novices continue with programming, they will likely do so by transitioning to a text-based programming language where they are confronted by a blank page and a blinking cursor. The move can be quite a shock. It is important for educators to be able to help with this transition. There are several elements to managing this transition: pedagogical, or tool-based. There exist tools that can show blocks and text, and there also exist tools occupying a middle space between blocks and text. In this session we will give a programming environment designer's view of why this transition is so difficult and explain how we attempted to solve the challenge in our own hybrid programming systems. We will then invite opinions from the audience on how they conquer the transition using tools and/or pedagogical approaches.
KW - blocks-based programming
KW - blocks-text transition
KW - pedagogy
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85127422706&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1145/3478432.3499033
DO - 10.1145/3478432.3499033
M3 - Conference paper
AN - SCOPUS:85127422706
T3 - SIGCSE 2022 - Proceedings of the 53rd ACM Technical Symposium on Computer Science Education V.2
SP - 1045
EP - 1046
BT - SIGCSE 2022 - Proceedings of the 53rd ACM Technical Symposium on Computer Science Education V.2
PB - Association for Computing Machinery, Inc
T2 - 53rd Annual ACM Technical Symposium on Computer Science Education, SIGCSE 2022
Y2 - 3 March 2022 through 5 March 2022
ER -
