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Parson's programming puzzles: a fun and effective learning tool for first programming courses

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Patricia HadenAuthors Info & Claims

ACE '06: Proceedings of the 8th Australasian Conference on Computing Education - Volume 52

Pages 157 - 163

Published: 01 January 2006 Publication History

Abstract

Mastery of basic syntactic and logical constructs is an essential part of learning to program. Unfortunately, practice exercises for programming basics can be very tedious, making it difficult to motivate students. In this paper we describe Parson's Programming Puzzles, an automated, interactive tool that provides practice with basic programming principles in an entertaining puzzle-like format. Careful design of the items in the puzzles allows the tutor to highlight particular topics and common programming errors. Since each puzzle solution is a complete sample of well-written code, use of the tool exposes students to good programming practice. This paper discusses the motivation of Parson's Programming Puzzles, and gives several examples. We describe the web-based authoring tool used to build the puzzles, and present our plans for future development.

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Cited By

Hou XWu ZWang XEricson BJoyner DKim MWang XXia M(2024)CodeTailor: LLM-Powered Personalized Parsons Puzzles for Engaging Support While Learning ProgrammingProceedings of the Eleventh ACM Conference on Learning @ Scale10.1145/3657604.3662032(51-62)Online publication date: 9-Jul-2024
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3657604.3662032
Sanhueza FGutierrez FVasquez AMonga MLonati VBarendsen ESheard JPaterson J(2024)Exploring the Acceptance and Effectiveness of Parsons Problems on Scaffolding CS1 RetakersProceedings of the 2024 on Innovation and Technology in Computer Science Education V. 110.1145/3649217.3653590(681-687)Online publication date: 3-Jul-2024
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3649217.3653590
Wu ZSmith DMonga MLonati VBarendsen ESheard JPaterson J(2024)Evaluating Micro Parsons Problems as Exam QuestionsProceedings of the 2024 on Innovation and Technology in Computer Science Education V. 110.1145/3649217.3653583(674-680)Online publication date: 3-Jul-2024
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3649217.3653583
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Parson's programming puzzles: a fun and effective learning tool for first programming courses

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cover image DL Hosted proceedings

ACE '06: Proceedings of the 8th Australasian Conference on Computing Education - Volume 52

January 2006

259 pages

ISBN:1920682341

Publisher

Australian Computer Society, Inc.

Australia

Publication History

Published: 01 January 2006

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ACE '06

ACE '06: Computing Education

January 16 - 19, 2006

Hobart, Australia

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Overall Acceptance Rate 161 of 359 submissions, 45%

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Cited By

Hou XWu ZWang XEricson BJoyner DKim MWang XXia M(2024)CodeTailor: LLM-Powered Personalized Parsons Puzzles for Engaging Support While Learning ProgrammingProceedings of the Eleventh ACM Conference on Learning @ Scale10.1145/3657604.3662032(51-62)Online publication date: 9-Jul-2024
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3657604.3662032
Sanhueza FGutierrez FVasquez AMonga MLonati VBarendsen ESheard JPaterson J(2024)Exploring the Acceptance and Effectiveness of Parsons Problems on Scaffolding CS1 RetakersProceedings of the 2024 on Innovation and Technology in Computer Science Education V. 110.1145/3649217.3653590(681-687)Online publication date: 3-Jul-2024
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3649217.3653590
Wu ZSmith DMonga MLonati VBarendsen ESheard JPaterson J(2024)Evaluating Micro Parsons Problems as Exam QuestionsProceedings of the 2024 on Innovation and Technology in Computer Science Education V. 110.1145/3649217.3653583(674-680)Online publication date: 3-Jul-2024
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3649217.3653583
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