Using Parsons Problems to Scaffold Metacognitive Awareness
John Marsden · 2020
After novice programmers learn to code, they ideally move directly through a six-stage programming problem-solving process when programming. However, they are usually unaware of this process and often skip stages in the problem-solving process or move through these stages in a sub-optimal order. Avoiding those errors requires a metacognitive awareness of their problem-solving process, which novices often lack. This paper reports on the results of an intervention, which utilizes a Parsons Problem, designed to determine if implicit guidance up through the solution search stage of the problem-solving process will lead to better outcomes for the students as they build a metacognitive scaffolding to support their problem-solving process.