Read the Debug Manual: A Debugging Manual for CS1 Students
Rita Garcia, Chieh-Ju Liao, Ariane Pearce · 2022 IEEE Frontiers in Education Conference (FIE) · 2022
Debugging manuals help programmers develop strategies to reduce program issues. These manuals assume the reader has prior programming knowledge to comprehend the presented strategies. While this assumed knowledge is above Introductory Programming (CS1) students’ programming abilities, it does illustrate a variety of strategies they can use during the debugging process to help them realise different approaches that are available to successfully debug a problem. In this research paper, we present a debugging manual, Read the Debugging Manual (RTDM), that is designed for CS1 students. The manual presents a variety of strategies that can be applied across the debugging process without assumed prior programming knowledge. A pilot study was conducted to evaluate the manual, where CS1 students were provided the manual as a debugging intervention for a programming activity. Students were invited to share their experiences and feedback on the manual by participating in a survey. The results show students wanting worked examples in the manual to practice strategies. Providing students with the manual seems to be supporting Self-Regulated Learning (SRL) strategies, helping students recall existing strategies and introducing them to new ones. The paper concludes with future research opportunities to improve the manual.