SPLASH 2014
Mon 20 - Fri 24 October 2014 Portland, Oregon, United States
Tue 21 Oct 2014 11:15 - 11:37 at Salon D - Session 2 Chair(s): Craig Anslow

Visual programming environments hold great potential for end-user programming, as they, e.g., aim at diminishing the syntactical burden and enabling a focus on the semantic aspects of coding. Hence, graphical approaches have gained attention in the context of K-12 computer science education. Scratch, as being the prime example, is a visual educational language, where even formulas are composed utilizing Lego-style blocks. However, graphical creation and manipulation of complex and nested formulas can become overly cumbersome. Thus, we propose a hybrid approach employing visual creation and textual representation of formulas. In order to evaluate the method, a usability study has been conducted, comparing Scratch to our mobile programming environment, Pocket Code. The findings, while preliminary, indicate an increased efficiency and effectiveness of the hybrid approach employed in Pocket Code in contrast to a purely visual one in Scratch for teenager users.

Tue 21 Oct

Displayed time zone: Tijuana, Baja California change

10:30 - 12:00
Session 2PLATEAU at Salon D
Chair(s): Craig Anslow University of Calgary
10:30
22m
Talk
Asking and Answering Questions during a Programming Change Task in Pharo Language
PLATEAU
File Attached
10:52
22m
Talk
EUKLAS: Supporting Copy-and-Paste Strategies for Integrating Example Code
PLATEAU
Christian Doerner Senacor Technologies AG, Andrew Faulring Carnegie Mellon University , Brad A. Myers Carnegie Mellon University
File Attached
11:15
22m
Talk
Empirical Comparison of Visual to Hybrid Formula Manipulation in Educational Programming Languages for Teenagers
PLATEAU
Roxane Koitz-Hristov Graz University of Technology, Wolfgang Slany Institute of Software Technology, Graz University of Technology
File Attached
11:37
22m
Talk
Usability and Suitability Survey of Features in Visual IDEs for Non-Programmers
PLATEAU
Jean Michel Rouly George Mason University, Jonathan Orbeck University of Alabama, Eugene Syriani University of Montreal
File Attached