Programming Instructors' and Students' Active (and Partial) Debugging: Deviation Noticing, Causal Modeling, and Intervening

• In Event: Perspectives on Learning in Technology-Rich Contexts

Abstract

Learning to program necessitates learning to debug, a reliably difficult pursuit (Klahr & Carver, 1988; McCauley et al., 2008). Even for newcomers working on relatively “simple” programs, they may still entertain a wide range of factors related to the broken program. Alternatively, teachers and students could consider a narrow subset of observable deviations, causal factors, and interventions during a given debugging session. With this spectrum in mind, we unpack teachers and middle school students’ active process of deviation noticing, causal modeling, and intervening by weaving together research on causal reasoning (e.g., disjunctive and conjunctive causation) and debugging. We argue that narrow debugging explorations raise substantial pedagogical considerations around how moments of failure can set up learning.

Authors

• David DeLiema, University of Minnesota - Twin Cities

• Jeffrey K. Bye, University of Minnesota - Twin Cities

• Vijay Marupudi, Georgia Institute of Technology