Visualizing Code Patterns in Novice Programmers

Many researchers have investigated the difficulties faced by novice programmers. However, these approaches have so far focused primarily on the identification and correction of common syntax errors, or that of topic difficulty in the CS1 curriculum. Meanwhile, poor coding practices adopted by students have gone mostly unaddressed. While these practices may not necessarily lead to erroneous code, they may nonetheless indicate areas of difficulty and lead to poorly structured programs. To address these issues, our project examines students' coding habits and common errors in CS1 exercises gathered from 77 first-year students. This data was collected in real time so that we may later reconstruct the thought process of the student while solving the programming exercises. To assist our analysis, we built a code visualizer that animates the programming process dynamically and summarizes error metrics simultaneously. Our ultimate goal is to use the code visualizer to help either an instructor or a student to identify poor programming practices during the coding process. With the error metrics gathered, an instructor can inspect potential improvements in coding behaviors for an individual student at a given point in time or over time, and identify bad coding habits common to populations of students.