An Interactive Web Environment to Foster Learning Programming at the High School Level
Adorilson Bezerra de Araújo · 2024
Teaching and learning programming can be complex tasks. In addition to the technical aspects, it is essential to consider each student's context. For instance, certain Brazilian career and technical education (CTE) schools include program-ming subjects in their regular curriculum. Attending such schools is sometimes viewed as a simpler path to higher education. There-fore, even if students have no specific interest in programming, they are required to take and pass programming courses. It is vital to ensure that the students' learning experiences are smooth and tailored to their pace, although this is only sometimes feasible. Hence, various learning strategies have been proposed in the literature to enhance programming learning. One of these strategies is scaffolding, which refers to any support provided to students during programming activities. However, only a few studies have investigated this learning strategy compared to others, especially at the high school level. In this context, the main research question of this work is: What are the main characteristics of a web environment that can promote learning and teaching programming to adolescents? The contributions of this work include: 1) a new model for learning programming; 2) the design, implementation, and evaluation of an interactive web-based environment to support this model; 3) the elaboration of an adaptable set of activities; and 4) findings from evaluation studies conducted in real classrooms, which will involve adolescent students at CTE high schools.