research-article

Language Migration in non-CS Introductory Programming through Mutual Language Translation Environment

Authors:

Yoshiaki Matsuzawa,

Manabu Sugiura,

Sanshiro SakaiAuthors Info & Claims

SIGCSE '15: Proceedings of the 46th ACM Technical Symposium on Computer Science Education

Pages 185 - 190

https://doi.org/10.1145/2676723.2677230

Published: 24 February 2015 Publication History

Abstract

In the past decade, improvements have been made to the environments used for introductory programming education, including by the introduction of visual programming languages such as Squeak and Scratch. However, migration from these languages to text-based programming languages such as C and Java is still a problem. Hence, using the OpenBlocks framework proposed at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, we developed a system named BlockEditor, which can translate bidirectionally between Block (the block language used here) and Java. We conducted an empirical study of this system in an introductory programming course taken by approximately 100 university students not majoring in computer science. When students were given opportunities to select the language to solve their programming assignments, we traced their selection by tracking working time with BlockEditor or Java for each individual student. The results illustrate the nature of the seamless migration from Block to Java, and show that there is great diversity in the timing and speed of migration to Java by each individual. Additionally, we found that students with low self-evaluation of their skill chose to use Block at a significantly higher rate than did students with high self-evaluation. This suggests that BlockEditor can act as scaffolding for students by promoting mixed programming between Block and Java in their migration phase.

References

[1]

H. Abelson, G. J. Sussman, and J. Sussman. Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs -- 2nd ed. MIT Press, 1996.

Digital Library

[2]

J. C. Cheung, G. Ngai, S. C. Chan, and W. W. Lau. Filling the gap in programming instruction: a text-enhanced graphical programming environment for junior high students. SIGCSE'09 Proceedings of the 40th ACM technical symposium on Computer science education, New York, NY, USA, 2009.

Digital Library

[3]

S. Cooper, W. Dann, and R. Pausch. Teaching objects-first in introductory computer science. In Proceedings of the 34th SIGCSE technical symposium on Computer science education, SIGCSE'03, pages 191--195, New York, NY, USA, 2003. ACM.

Digital Library

[4]

W. Dann, D. Cosgrove, D. Slater, D. Culyba, and S. Cooper. Mediated transfer: Alice 3 to java. In Proceedings of the 43rd ACM Technical Symposium on Computer Science Education, SIGCSE'12, pages 141--146, 2012.

Digital Library

[5]

M. Fal and N. Cagiltay. How Scratch Programming May Enrich Engineering Education. In 2nd International Engineering Education Conference(IEEC2012), pages 107--113, 2012.

[6]

Google Inc. Blockly:a visual programming editor. http://code.google.com/p/blockly/, referenced at 2013.03.17.

[7]

B. Harvey and J. Monig. Bringing-no ceiling-to scratch: Can one language serve kids and computer scientists' Constructionism 2010, Paris, 2010.

[8]

D. Ingalls, T. Kaehler, J. Maloney, S. Wallace, and A. Kay. Back to the future: The story of squeak, a practical smalltalk writtern in itself. Proc. of ACM OOPSLA'97, page 318, 1997.

Digital Library

[9]

S. Kanemune, T. Nakatani, R. Mitarai, S. Fukui, and Y. Kuno. Dolittle - experiences in teaching programming at K12 schools. In Second International Conference on Creating, Connecting and Collaborating through Computing(C5), pages 177--184, 2004.

Digital Library

[10]

A. Kay. Squeak Etoys authoring & media. Viewpoints Research Institute Research Note, 2005.

[11]

C. Lewis. How programming environment shapes perception, learning and goals: logo vs. scratch. In Proceedings of the 41st ACM technical symposium on Computer science education (SIGCSE'10 ), pages 346--350, 2010.

Digital Library

[12]

C. Lewis. What do Students Learn About Programming From Game, Music Video, And Storytelling Projects? In Proceedings of the 43rd ACM technical symposium on Computer science education (SIGCSE'12 ), pages 643--648, 2012.

Digital Library

[13]

J. Maloney, L. Burd, Y. Kafai, N. Rusk, B. Silverman, and M. Resnick. Scratch: a sneak preview. In Proceedings Second International Conference on Creating Connecting and Collaborating through Computing 2004, pages 104--109, 2004.

Digital Library

[14]

Y. Matsuzawa, K. Okada, and S. Sakai. Programming Process Visualizer: A Proposal of the Tool for Students to Observe Their Programming Process. In Innovation and Technology in Computer Science Education (ITiCSE'13), pages 46--51, 2013.

Digital Library

[15]

D. Ozoran, N. Cagiltay, and D. Topalli. Using Scratch In Introduction to Programming Course for Engineering Students. In 2nd International Engineering Education Conference(IEEC2012), pages 125--132, 2012.

[16]

S. Papert. Mindstorms: children, computers, and powerful ideas. Basic Books, Inc., New York, NY, USA, 1980.

Digital Library

[17]

E. Pasternak. Visual programming pedagogies and integrating current visual programming language features. Master's thesis, Carnegie Mellon University Robotics Institute Master's Degree, 2009.

[18]

R. V. Roque. Openblocks: An extendable framework for graphical block programming systems. Master thesis at MIT, 2007.

[19]

Scratch Team Lifelong Kindergarten Group MIT Media Lab. Scratch -imagine.program.share- http://scratch.mit.edu/.

[20]

UNESCO. ICT Curriculum for School / Program of Teacher Development. http://unesdoc.unesco.org/images/0012/001295/129538e.pdf, 2002.

[21]

A. Warth, T. Yamamiya, Y. Ohshima, and W. Scott. Toward a more scalable end-user scripting language. In Proceedings Second International Conference on Creating Connecting and Collaborating through Computing 2008, pages 172--178, 2008.

Digital Library

[22]

J. Wing. Computational Thinking. Communications of the ACM, 49(3):33--35, 2006.

Digital Library

[23]

D. Wood, J. S. Bruner, and G. Ross. The role of tutoring in problem solving. Journal of child psychology and psychiatry, 17(2):89--100, 1976.

Cited By

Homer MEdwards JTaeumel M(2024)Reclaiming the Unexplored in Hybrid Visual ProgrammingProceedings of the 2024 ACM SIGPLAN International Symposium on New Ideas, New Paradigms, and Reflections on Programming and Software10.1145/3689492.3690045(13-25)Online publication date: 17-Oct-2024
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3689492.3690045
Weill-Tessier PBrown NKölling M(2024)Strype: a Versatile Python-like Programming Environment for NovicesProceedings of the 19th WiPSCE Conference on Primary and Secondary Computing Education Research10.1145/3677619.3678132(1-2)Online publication date: 16-Sep-2024
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3677619.3678132
Morgan MGash KLudi STruong T(2024)Investigating the Usability of Coding Applications for Children: Insights from Teacher Interviews2024 IEEE Symposium on Visual Languages and Human-Centric Computing (VL/HCC)10.1109/VL/HCC60511.2024.00016(47-58)Online publication date: 2-Sep-2024
https://doi.org/10.1109/VL/HCC60511.2024.00016
Show More Cited By

Index Terms

Language Migration in non-CS Introductory Programming through Mutual Language Translation Environment
1. Social and professional topics
  1. Professional topics
    1. Computing education
      1. Computing education programs
        Computer science education
        Information science education
2. Software and its engineering
  1. Software creation and management
    1. Designing software
      1. Software implementation planning
        Software design techniques
    2. Software development process management
  2. Software notations and tools
    1. Context specific languages
      1. Visual languages

Recommendations

PseuToPy: Towards a Non-English Natural Programming Language
ICER 2021: Proceedings of the 17th ACM Conference on International Computing Education Research

Most text-based programming languages found in introductory programming courses use English words. This fact alone can deter non-English speakers who wish to learn to program: how can we expect them to learn a programming language if they do not even ...
Natural language in introductory programming: an experimental study
ITiCSE '11: Proceedings of the 16th annual joint conference on Innovation and technology in computer science education

Although characterized as being "high level", classical programming languages such as Pascal and C have a grammar that is very different from natural language. In this research field, two main streams are noteworthy, one of them is characterized by an ...
Benefits of Self-explanation in Introductory Programming
SIGCSE '15: Proceedings of the 46th ACM Technical Symposium on Computer Science Education

One approach for helping students learn to program is the use of self-explanation assignments. In these assignments, students explain instructional materials using domain knowledge covered in the course. In this work, we describe a randomized experiment ...

Comments

Information & Contributors

Information

Published In

cover image ACM Conferences

SIGCSE '15: Proceedings of the 46th ACM Technical Symposium on Computer Science Education

February 2015

766 pages

ISBN:9781450329668

DOI:10.1145/2676723

General Chairs:
Adrienne Decker
Rochester Institute of Technology
,
Kurt Eiselt
University of British Columbia
,
Program Chairs:
Carl Alphonce
University at Buffalo
,
Jodi Tims
Baldwin Wallace College

Copyright © 2015 ACM.

Permission to make digital or hard copies of all or part of this work for personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. Copyrights for components of this work owned by others than ACM must be honored. Abstracting with credit is permitted. To copy otherwise, or republish, to post on servers or to redistribute to lists, requires prior specific permission and/or a fee. Request permissions from [email protected]

Sponsors

SIGCSE: ACM Special Interest Group on Computer Science Education

Publisher

Association for Computing Machinery

New York, NY, United States

Publication History

Published: 24 February 2015

Permissions

Request permissions for this article.

Request Permissions

Check for updates

Author Tags

Qualifiers

Research-article

Conference

SIGCSE '15

Sponsor:

SIGCSE

SIGCSE '15: The 46th ACM Technical Symposium on Computer Science Education

March 4 - 7, 2015

Missouri, Kansas City, USA

Acceptance Rates

SIGCSE '15 Paper Acceptance Rate 105 of 289 submissions, 36%;

Overall Acceptance Rate 1,787 of 5,146 submissions, 35%

Contributors

Other Metrics

View Article Metrics

Bibliometrics & Citations

Bibliometrics

Article Metrics

32
Total Citations
View Citations
498
Total Downloads

Downloads (Last 12 months)24
Downloads (Last 6 weeks)3

Reflects downloads up to 03 Mar 2025

Other Metrics

View Author Metrics

Citations

Cited By

Homer MEdwards JTaeumel M(2024)Reclaiming the Unexplored in Hybrid Visual ProgrammingProceedings of the 2024 ACM SIGPLAN International Symposium on New Ideas, New Paradigms, and Reflections on Programming and Software10.1145/3689492.3690045(13-25)Online publication date: 17-Oct-2024
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3689492.3690045
Weill-Tessier PBrown NKölling M(2024)Strype: a Versatile Python-like Programming Environment for NovicesProceedings of the 19th WiPSCE Conference on Primary and Secondary Computing Education Research10.1145/3677619.3678132(1-2)Online publication date: 16-Sep-2024
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3677619.3678132
Morgan MGash KLudi STruong T(2024)Investigating the Usability of Coding Applications for Children: Insights from Teacher Interviews2024 IEEE Symposium on Visual Languages and Human-Centric Computing (VL/HCC)10.1109/VL/HCC60511.2024.00016(47-58)Online publication date: 2-Sep-2024
https://doi.org/10.1109/VL/HCC60511.2024.00016
Branthôme M(2023)Pyrates: Design and Evaluation of a Serious Game Aimed at Introducing Python Programming and Easing the Transition from BlocksACM Transactions on Computing Education10.1145/363906124:1(1-24)Online publication date: 29-Dec-2023
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3639061
Coşkunserçe O(2023)Comparing the use of block‐based and robot programming in introductory programming education: Effects on perceptions of programming self‐efficacyComputer Applications in Engineering Education10.1002/cae.2263731:5(1234-1255)Online publication date: 8-May-2023
https://doi.org/10.1002/cae.22637
Weill-Tessier PKyfonidis CBrown NKölling MBecker BQuille KLaakso MBarendsen ESimon (2022)StrypeProceedings of the 27th ACM Conference on on Innovation and Technology in Computer Science Education Vol. 210.1145/3502717.3532155(585-586)Online publication date: 7-Jul-2022
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3502717.3532155
Kazemitabaar MChyhir VWeintrop DGrossman T(2022)CodeStruct: Design and Evaluation of an Intermediary Programming Environment for Novices to Transition from Scratch to PythonProceedings of the 21st Annual ACM Interaction Design and Children Conference10.1145/3501712.3529733(261-273)Online publication date: 27-Jun-2022
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3501712.3529733
Allen ODowns XVaroy ELuxton-Reilly AGiacaman N(2022)Block-Based Object-Oriented ProgrammingIEEE Transactions on Learning Technologies10.1109/TLT.2022.319031815:4(439-453)Online publication date: 1-Aug-2022
https://doi.org/10.1109/TLT.2022.3190318
Zdawczyk CVarma K(2022)Engaging girls in computer science: gender differences in attitudes and beliefs about learning scratch and pythonComputer Science Education10.1080/08993408.2022.209559333:4(600-620)Online publication date: 6-Jul-2022
https://doi.org/10.1080/08993408.2022.2095593
Geng Z(2022)Environmental design as a component of block‐based programmingComputer Applications in Engineering Education10.1002/cae.2259131:2(408-420)Online publication date: 23-Dec-2022
https://doi.org/10.1002/cae.22591
Show More Cited By

View Options

Login options

Check if you have access through your login credentials or your institution to get full access on this article.

Full Access

Get this Publication

View options

PDF

View or Download as a PDF file.

eReader

View online with eReader.

Figures

Tables

Media

View Table of Conten