Role of Live-coding in Learning Introductory Programming
Adalbert Gerald Soosai Raj, Jignesh M. Patel, Richard Halverson, Erica Rosenfeld Halverson · 2018
Live-coding is an approach to teaching programming by writing actual code during class as part of the lectures. In a live-coding session, the instructor thinks aloud while writing code and the students are able to understand the process of programming by observing the thought processes of the instructor. In our study, we conducted a live-coding session to two groups of students as a part of a teaching intervention that was originally designed for studying the effects of using the native language for learning programming. We analyzed the student feedback data that was collected and found that many students have mentioned about the usefulness of live-coding for learning programming. We conducted a grounded theory analysis of the student feedback data to understand the value of live-coding for learning introductory programming. We found that live-coding (1) makes the process of programming easy to understand for novice programmers, (2) helps students learn the process of debugging, and (3) exposes students to good programming practices. We also found that students prefer to code along with the instructor during a live-coding session rather than being mere observers.