Pub Date : 2017-12-01DOI: 10.1109/BLOCKS.2017.8120400
Matthew Poole
We are currently developing PyBlocks, a blocks-based environment which allows novice programmers to construct and execute Python programs. In the initial design of PyBlocks [1], Python's basic data types and lists are represented using colors, every expression block is colored according to its type, and each unfilled slot contains color indicating all valid argument types. In this paper we extend the design to include Python's most common built-in composite types (lists, tuples, dictionaries and sets) and to allow nesting of these where appropriate. Using example types from a pedagogical media computation library, we also show how further types may be supported. Together, these extensions provide almost any type novice Python programmers are likely to use.
{"title":"Extending the design of a blocks-based python environment to support complex types","authors":"Matthew Poole","doi":"10.1109/BLOCKS.2017.8120400","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1109/BLOCKS.2017.8120400","url":null,"abstract":"We are currently developing PyBlocks, a blocks-based environment which allows novice programmers to construct and execute Python programs. In the initial design of PyBlocks [1], Python's basic data types and lists are represented using colors, every expression block is colored according to its type, and each unfilled slot contains color indicating all valid argument types. In this paper we extend the design to include Python's most common built-in composite types (lists, tuples, dictionaries and sets) and to allow nesting of these where appropriate. Using example types from a pedagogical media computation library, we also show how further types may be supported. Together, these extensions provide almost any type novice Python programmers are likely to use.","PeriodicalId":424744,"journal":{"name":"2017 IEEE Blocks and Beyond Workshop (B&B)","volume":"71 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2017-12-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"133618267","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2017-12-01DOI: 10.1109/BLOCKS.2017.8120409
D. Rough, A. Quigley
Experience Sampling Method (ESM) studies repeatedly survey participants on their behaviours and experiences as they go about their everyday lives. Smartphones afford an ideal platform for ESM study applications as devices seldom leave their users, and can automatically sense surrounding context to augment subjective survey responses. ESM studies are employed in fields such as psychology and social science where researchers are not necessarily programmers and require tools for application creation. Previous tools using web forms, text files, or flowchart paradigms are either insufficient to model the potential complexity of study protocols, or fail to provide a low threshold to entry. We demonstrate that blocks programming simultaneously lowers the barriers to creating simple study protocols, while enabling the creation of increasingly sophisticated protocols. We discuss the design of Jeeves, our blocks-based environment for ESM studies, and explain advantages that blocks afford in ESM study design.
{"title":"Overcoming mental blocks: A blocks-based approach to experience sampling studies","authors":"D. Rough, A. Quigley","doi":"10.1109/BLOCKS.2017.8120409","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1109/BLOCKS.2017.8120409","url":null,"abstract":"Experience Sampling Method (ESM) studies repeatedly survey participants on their behaviours and experiences as they go about their everyday lives. Smartphones afford an ideal platform for ESM study applications as devices seldom leave their users, and can automatically sense surrounding context to augment subjective survey responses. ESM studies are employed in fields such as psychology and social science where researchers are not necessarily programmers and require tools for application creation. Previous tools using web forms, text files, or flowchart paradigms are either insufficient to model the potential complexity of study protocols, or fail to provide a low threshold to entry. We demonstrate that blocks programming simultaneously lowers the barriers to creating simple study protocols, while enabling the creation of increasingly sophisticated protocols. We discuss the design of Jeeves, our blocks-based environment for ESM studies, and explain advantages that blocks afford in ESM study design.","PeriodicalId":424744,"journal":{"name":"2017 IEEE Blocks and Beyond Workshop (B&B)","volume":"266 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2017-12-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"124189966","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2017-10-01DOI: 10.1109/BLOCKS.2017.8120418
Beryl Hoffman, Ilya Ilyankou, R. Morelli
The Mobile Computer Science Principles curriculum collects data on embedded Quizly programming exercises, which are based on the App Inventor version of Blockly. We have recently started mining this data to determine whether student performance on the programming exercises matches our assumptions about the difficulty of the individual exercises. Various analytic techniques, such as linear regression, are used to identify those features that are most determinative of problem difficulty. Our analysis supports that the number of abstractions may be a useful predictor for the difficulty (defined for our data set as the average number of attempts) in solving Quizly exercises. However, there are other not so easily quantifiable factors that also affect a problem's difficulty.
{"title":"Abstraction as a predictor of difficulty in quizly problems","authors":"Beryl Hoffman, Ilya Ilyankou, R. Morelli","doi":"10.1109/BLOCKS.2017.8120418","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1109/BLOCKS.2017.8120418","url":null,"abstract":"The Mobile Computer Science Principles curriculum collects data on embedded Quizly programming exercises, which are based on the App Inventor version of Blockly. We have recently started mining this data to determine whether student performance on the programming exercises matches our assumptions about the difficulty of the individual exercises. Various analytic techniques, such as linear regression, are used to identify those features that are most determinative of problem difficulty. Our analysis supports that the number of abstractions may be a useful predictor for the difficulty (defined for our data set as the average number of attempts) in solving Quizly exercises. However, there are other not so easily quantifiable factors that also affect a problem's difficulty.","PeriodicalId":424744,"journal":{"name":"2017 IEEE Blocks and Beyond Workshop (B&B)","volume":"42 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2017-10-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"123857554","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2017-10-01DOI: 10.1109/BLOCKS.2017.8120419
B. Broll, Hamid Zare, D. N. Do, Mohini Misra, Á. Lédeczi
NetsBlox is a visual blocks-based programming language extending Snap! with a few carefully selected abstractions to support distributed programming. In this paper, we argue that with the help of NetsBlox, some of the fundamental concepts of computer networking can be included in the high school computer science curriculum. Specifically, we describe a set of curricular units that would fit nicely in the AP Computer Science Principles course. High school students in two short-term studies showed great engagement and were able to complete simple computer networking tasks.
{"title":"You can teach computer networking in high school","authors":"B. Broll, Hamid Zare, D. N. Do, Mohini Misra, Á. Lédeczi","doi":"10.1109/BLOCKS.2017.8120419","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1109/BLOCKS.2017.8120419","url":null,"abstract":"NetsBlox is a visual blocks-based programming language extending Snap! with a few carefully selected abstractions to support distributed programming. In this paper, we argue that with the help of NetsBlox, some of the fundamental concepts of computer networking can be included in the high school computer science curriculum. Specifically, we describe a set of curricular units that would fit nicely in the AP Computer Science Principles course. High school students in two short-term studies showed great engagement and were able to complete simple computer networking tasks.","PeriodicalId":424744,"journal":{"name":"2017 IEEE Blocks and Beyond Workshop (B&B)","volume":"41 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2017-10-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"133248438","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2017-10-01DOI: 10.1109/BLOCKS.2017.8120424
B. Broll, Hamid Zare, Á. Lédeczi
NetsBlox is a visual blocks-based programming language that supports distributed programming. NetsBlox includes Remote Procedure Calls (RPC) that provide access to a set of online scientific data sources such as maps, weather, earthquakes, astronomy imagery, air pollution, etc. This demonstration shows how to use these RPCs to create engaging science projects.
{"title":"Creating engaging science projects with netsblox","authors":"B. Broll, Hamid Zare, Á. Lédeczi","doi":"10.1109/BLOCKS.2017.8120424","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1109/BLOCKS.2017.8120424","url":null,"abstract":"NetsBlox is a visual blocks-based programming language that supports distributed programming. NetsBlox includes Remote Procedure Calls (RPC) that provide access to a set of online scientific data sources such as maps, weather, earthquakes, astronomy imagery, air pollution, etc. This demonstration shows how to use these RPCs to create engaging science projects.","PeriodicalId":424744,"journal":{"name":"2017 IEEE Blocks and Beyond Workshop (B&B)","volume":"79 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2017-10-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"125571469","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2017-10-01DOI: 10.1109/BLOCKS.2017.8120417
Isabelle Li, F. Turbak, Eni Mustafaraj
One of the most important computational concepts in any programming language is procedural abstraction. We investigate the use of procedures in MIT App Inventor, a web-based blocks programming environment for creating Android mobile apps. We explore how procedures are used “in the wild” by examining two datasets of App Inventor projects: all projects of ten thousand randomly chosen users and all projects of all prolific users (those users with 20 or more projects). Our data analysis indicates that procedural abstraction is a concept that is learned over time by some App Inventor users, but it is used relatively infrequently, and features like parameters and returning values are used even more rarely. Procedures are most frequently called only once, indicating that they are often used to organize code rather than to reuse it. Surprisingly, 10% of declared procedures are never called, suggesting that this situation should be flagged by the environment.
{"title":"Calls of the wild: Exploring procedural abstraction in app inventor","authors":"Isabelle Li, F. Turbak, Eni Mustafaraj","doi":"10.1109/BLOCKS.2017.8120417","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1109/BLOCKS.2017.8120417","url":null,"abstract":"One of the most important computational concepts in any programming language is procedural abstraction. We investigate the use of procedures in MIT App Inventor, a web-based blocks programming environment for creating Android mobile apps. We explore how procedures are used “in the wild” by examining two datasets of App Inventor projects: all projects of ten thousand randomly chosen users and all projects of all prolific users (those users with 20 or more projects). Our data analysis indicates that procedural abstraction is a concept that is learned over time by some App Inventor users, but it is used relatively infrequently, and features like parameters and returning values are used even more rarely. Procedures are most frequently called only once, indicating that they are often used to organize code rather than to reuse it. Surprisingly, 10% of declared procedures are never called, suggesting that this situation should be flagged by the environment.","PeriodicalId":424744,"journal":{"name":"2017 IEEE Blocks and Beyond Workshop (B&B)","volume":"10 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2017-10-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"123147306","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2017-10-01DOI: 10.1109/BLOCKS.2017.8120414
T. Price, T. Barnes
Block-based programming environments make learning to program easier by allowing learners to focus on concepts rather than syntax. However, these environments offer little support when learners encounter difficulty with programming concepts themselves, especially in the absence of instructors. Textual programming environments increasingly use AI and data mining to provide intelligent, adaptive support for students, similar to human tutoring, which has been shown to improve performance and learning outcomes. In this position paper, we argue that block-based programming environments should also include these features. This paper gives an overview of promising research in intelligent support for programming and highlights the challenges and opportunities for applying this work to block-based programming.
{"title":"Position paper: Block-based programming should offer intelligent support for learners","authors":"T. Price, T. Barnes","doi":"10.1109/BLOCKS.2017.8120414","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1109/BLOCKS.2017.8120414","url":null,"abstract":"Block-based programming environments make learning to program easier by allowing learners to focus on concepts rather than syntax. However, these environments offer little support when learners encounter difficulty with programming concepts themselves, especially in the absence of instructors. Textual programming environments increasingly use AI and data mining to provide intelligent, adaptive support for students, similar to human tutoring, which has been shown to improve performance and learning outcomes. In this position paper, we argue that block-based programming environments should also include these features. This paper gives an overview of promising research in intelligent support for programming and highlights the challenges and opportunities for applying this work to block-based programming.","PeriodicalId":424744,"journal":{"name":"2017 IEEE Blocks and Beyond Workshop (B&B)","volume":"24 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2017-10-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"132977452","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2017-10-01DOI: 10.1109/BLOCKS.2017.8120406
David Weintrop, David C. Shepherd, Patrick Francis, Diana Franklin
The block-based approach to programming is an effective way to engage young learners in programming and the powerful ideas of computing. In this paper, we explore the potential of using this same approach in a very different programming context: industrial robotics. Using a customized language built with the Blockly library, we created a block-based interface for programming a one-armed industrial robot. This paper presents a block-based robot programming language called Robot Blockly, focusing on how the various affordances of block-based programming were utilized to make the challenge of robot programming more accessible. We also present results from a small-scale study showing adults with no prior programming experience successfully programming a virtual robot to accomplish a pick and place task. The contribution of this work is in showing the potential for block-based programming beyond young learners and classrooms.
{"title":"Blockly goes to work: Block-based programming for industrial robots","authors":"David Weintrop, David C. Shepherd, Patrick Francis, Diana Franklin","doi":"10.1109/BLOCKS.2017.8120406","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1109/BLOCKS.2017.8120406","url":null,"abstract":"The block-based approach to programming is an effective way to engage young learners in programming and the powerful ideas of computing. In this paper, we explore the potential of using this same approach in a very different programming context: industrial robotics. Using a customized language built with the Blockly library, we created a block-based interface for programming a one-armed industrial robot. This paper presents a block-based robot programming language called Robot Blockly, focusing on how the various affordances of block-based programming were utilized to make the challenge of robot programming more accessible. We also present results from a small-scale study showing adults with no prior programming experience successfully programming a virtual robot to accomplish a pick and place task. The contribution of this work is in showing the potential for block-based programming beyond young learners and classrooms.","PeriodicalId":424744,"journal":{"name":"2017 IEEE Blocks and Beyond Workshop (B&B)","volume":"171 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2017-10-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"117288676","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2017-10-01DOI: 10.1109/BLOCKS.2017.8120407
Luke Gusukuma, D. Kafura, Austin Cory Bart
We present a block-based language for specifying feedback to novice learners about the programs they are constructing in a block-based programming language. In addition to feedback based on run-time and output checking, we are particularly interested in immediate feedback: corrective guidance given as the program is being constructed. Immediate feedback is a natural extension of the block-based language philosophy. Block-based languages prevent by design certain types of mistakes in all cases. Immediate feedback guides against, without fully preventing, problem-specific mistakes (i.e., constructions that are erroneous in only some cases). A feedback specification contains a block pattern and a set of actions that can be taken whenever the corresponding pattern is present or absent in the student's block program for a given problem. The paper illustrates the language through several examples derived from misconceptions found in the block-based programs of students taking a university-level Computational Thinking class. The feasibility of the proposed approach is shown by the translation of a specification using an evolving programmatic interface in BlockPy, a dual block/text programming environment for a subset of Python.
{"title":"Authoring feedback for novice programmers in a block-based language","authors":"Luke Gusukuma, D. Kafura, Austin Cory Bart","doi":"10.1109/BLOCKS.2017.8120407","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1109/BLOCKS.2017.8120407","url":null,"abstract":"We present a block-based language for specifying feedback to novice learners about the programs they are constructing in a block-based programming language. In addition to feedback based on run-time and output checking, we are particularly interested in immediate feedback: corrective guidance given as the program is being constructed. Immediate feedback is a natural extension of the block-based language philosophy. Block-based languages prevent by design certain types of mistakes in all cases. Immediate feedback guides against, without fully preventing, problem-specific mistakes (i.e., constructions that are erroneous in only some cases). A feedback specification contains a block pattern and a set of actions that can be taken whenever the corresponding pattern is present or absent in the student's block program for a given problem. The paper illustrates the language through several examples derived from misconceptions found in the block-based programs of students taking a university-level Computational Thinking class. The feasibility of the proposed approach is shown by the translation of a specification using an evolving programmatic interface in BlockPy, a dual block/text programming environment for a subset of Python.","PeriodicalId":424744,"journal":{"name":"2017 IEEE Blocks and Beyond Workshop (B&B)","volume":"50 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2017-10-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"115617416","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2017-10-01DOI: 10.1109/BLOCKS.2017.8120403
Austin Cory Bart, Luke Gusukuma, D. Kafura
Block-based languages are a useful scaffold for novice programmers to create syntactically correct code. However, block environments that attempt to represent feature-rich languages, such as Python or Java, face serious usability and pedagogical challenges. How can the affordances and controls of a block be exposed, without over-complicating the block's interface and obscuring its meaning to the user? In this paper, we visually explore a number of interface mechanisms to reconfigure blocks. We outline research questions to compare and contrast the advantages and disadvantages of these mechanisms, and call on the community to pursue these trade-offs further.
{"title":"Really pushing my buttons: Affordances in block interfaces","authors":"Austin Cory Bart, Luke Gusukuma, D. Kafura","doi":"10.1109/BLOCKS.2017.8120403","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1109/BLOCKS.2017.8120403","url":null,"abstract":"Block-based languages are a useful scaffold for novice programmers to create syntactically correct code. However, block environments that attempt to represent feature-rich languages, such as Python or Java, face serious usability and pedagogical challenges. How can the affordances and controls of a block be exposed, without over-complicating the block's interface and obscuring its meaning to the user? In this paper, we visually explore a number of interface mechanisms to reconfigure blocks. We outline research questions to compare and contrast the advantages and disadvantages of these mechanisms, and call on the community to pursue these trade-offs further.","PeriodicalId":424744,"journal":{"name":"2017 IEEE Blocks and Beyond Workshop (B&B)","volume":"1 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2017-10-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"130898201","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
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