Supporting Novice Programmers: Developing and Evaluating Interactive Programming Activities

Watch a compelling colloquium presentation from the Allen School where David Smith, a Ph.D. candidate from UIUC, explores innovative approaches to teaching programming at scale in the age of Generative AI. Discover how Parsons problems and Explain in Plain English (EiPE) questions are being developed and evaluated to support novice programmers. Learn about methodologies for assessing programming exercises in both formative and summative contexts, with particular emphasis on adapting educational techniques for human-GenAI collaborative coding environments. Gain insights into the transformation of computing education, where the focus is shifting from independent code writing to skills like natural language description of computational tasks and code comprehension. Explore research findings on multilingual code comprehension activities and scaffolded programming exercises designed to enhance learning outcomes for large student groups.