Cycles in State Transition as Trial-and-Errors in Solving Programming Exercises

Abstract

In recent years, Japan’s education system has started regarding trial-and-error favorably and is accordingly evaluating its strategy. Evaluation of trial-and-error has become crucial to learning analytics. Jigsaw Code is a programming exercise that gives students shuffled code blocks of a solution program, including fake ones, and asks them to rearrange the blocks in the correct order. It logs the solving actions of each student. This paper shows that the cycles in the state transition of the solution indicate the students’ trial-and-error process. Two hundred and thirty undergraduates solved 11 puzzles (problems) of Jigsaw Code. We analyzed the transition of the solution sequence at each solving action and found cycles in the state transition. For 97% of the plays, including the frequently appearing cycles, the first state of each cycle was the subsequence of the final solution. A cycle in the solution state transition shows that the student returned to the cycle’s first state after searching for other solutions, as they probably regarded the cycle’s first state as leading to the correct final solution.