Allegories for learning abstract programming concepts

TítuloAllegories for learning abstract programming concepts
Tipo de publicaciónConference Paper
Año de publicación
2014
Autores
Jeisson Hidalgo-Céspedes
Conference Name
Proceedings of the Tenth Annual Conference on International Computing Education Research
Fecha de publicación
08/2014
Editorial
ACM
Conference Location
New York, NY, USA
Número ISBN
978-1-4503-2755-8
URL
http://doi.acm.org/10.1145/2632320.2632326
DOI
10.1145/2632320.2632326
Palabras clave
allegory
learning
metaphor
programming language
Resumen

Constructivism theory states that learning is unavoidably done through association of new concepts with existing ones. Although programming concepts are abstract metaphors of some colloquial concepts, they seem to be not enough to overcome learning difficulties. We hypothesize that interrelated systems of metaphors (allegories) of abstract programming concepts can ease the association process and improve student learning. Our research introduces allegoric development environments and proposes to experimentally evaluate their effects on learning of programming concepts reported as difficult by students.