Fading Strategies for Parsons Problems in Intermediate Classrooms
Serena Caraco, Nelson Lojo, Armando Fox · 2025
Faded Parsons Problems (FPPs) are a variant of Parsons Problems in which students reconstruct short pieces of code by filling in blanks (''fades'') and rearranging pre-written scrambled lines of code. We are particularly interested in FPPs' demonstrated superiority over code-writing or code-comprehension exercises for scaffolding the teaching of advanced programming concepts. However, little is known about how the choice of what to fade (i.e. which tokens to blank out in the scrambled code lines) affects an FPP's difficulty and efficacy, and existing Parsons Problems research does not address advanced classrooms. Code for italics .xx. Code for bolTo inform the choice of what to fade, and potentially allow automated fading of a reference solution for formative assessments, we devise a conceptual guide for constructing FPP ''fading strategies'' informed by guidelines from prior work as well as our own experience. Using this guide, we generate three strategies that are variably aware of the context of the program text they fade. We compare the strategies using a between-subjects study in which students solve FPPs around an advanced software engineering topic. We find that the difficulty and efficacy of the problems, as measured by time on task, qualitative surveys, and long-term retention, does not appear to depend on context-awareness, but also find that random choices are, in some senses, ''more obfuscating'' than our other strategies. We conclude that our simplest strategy suffices for the future study of automatic fading of FPPs scaffolding advanced topics.