Introducing a Paper-Based Programming Language for Computing Education in Classrooms
Aditya Mehrotra, Christian Giang, Noé Duruz, Julien Dedelley, Andrea Mussati, Melissa Skweres, Francesco Mondada · 2020
Past research has shown that the use of tangible programming platforms in computing education can enhance students' interest, engagement, and collaboration within workgroups. However, to this day, the adoption of such interfaces in classrooms has remained relatively scarce. This is possibly due to the expenses and efforts necessary to acquire, set up and maintain such platforms. In this context, the use of paper as a principal means of interaction represents an inexpensive and versatile solution, that additionally harnesses the prevalence of paper in classrooms. This work, therefore, introduces PaPL, an easily reproducible platform for paper-based programming languages. The platform was evaluated in two exploratory user studies. The first study aimed at investigating the interaction of over 100 senior year high school students with the platform under varying conditions of group size and usage constraints. In the second study, the platform was tested with 32 sixth-graders and 2 teachers to evaluate its usage in an authentic context. The results indicate that group size may affect active discussion and error count, while usage constraints may affect active discussion of students interacting with the platform. Moreover, the classroom study shows promising results with regard to the use of PaPL in formal education.