Issues in learning the language of Live Sequence Charts (LSC) and scenario-based programming
Leading team:
- Prof. David Harel
- Prof. Michal Armoni
Project team:
- Dr. Giora Alexandron
- Dr. Michal Gordon
Brief
This study examines the new paradigm of scenario-based programming, expressed in the language of Live Sequence Charts (LSC). Specifically, we investigated the following questions:
- How can this paradigm be employed to introduce some fundamental CS ideas?
- How does previous experience with a different paradigm (such as object-oriented programming or procedural programming) affect the transition to the new paradigm?
- How does the use of this paradigm affect problem-solving strategies?
Our results characterize the effects of the students’ previous programming experience on their views towards LSC and their design practice in LSC. Our findings also show that LSC and the scenario-based paradigm enable students to take a more user-oriented perspective rather than an implementation-oriented one, as well as promoting the perception of abstraction and non-determinism. The research was conducted on a diverse populations – graduate students as well as high-school students.
This is the doctoral research of Dr. Giora Alexandron.
Further reading:
- Alexandron, G., Armoni, M., & Harel, D. (2011). Programming with the user in mind. Proceedings of the Annual Conference of the Psychology of Programming Interest Group. (PPIG 2011). York, UK: University of York
- Alexandron, G., Armoni, M., Gordon, G., & Harel, D. (2012). The effect of previous programming experience on the learning of scenario-based programming. In Proceedings of the 12th Koli Calling International Conference on Computing Education Research, Tahko, Finland, 151-159.
- Alexandron, G., Armoni, M., Gordon, G., & Harel, D. (2013). On Teaching Programming with Nondeterminism. In Proceedings of the 8th Workshop in Primary and Secondary Computing Education (WiPSCE'13), Aarhus, Denmark, 71-74.
- Alexandron, G., Armoni, M., Gordon, M., & Harel, D. (2014). Scenario-based programming: Reducing the cognitive load, fostering abstract thinking. In Companion Proceedings of the 36th International Conference on Software Engineering (ICSE 2014), Hyderabad, India, 311-320.
- Alexandron, G., Armoni, M., Gordon, G., and Harel, D. (2014). Scenario-based programming, usability-oriented perception. ACM Transactions on Computing Education, 14(3), 21:1-23.
- Alexandron, G., Armoni, M., Gordon, M., & Harel, D. (2016). Teaching nondeterminism through programming. Informatics in Education 15(1), 1-23.
- Alexandron, G., Armoni, M., Gordon, M., & Harel, D. (2017). Teaching scenario-based programming: an additional paradigm for the high school computer science curriculum, Part 1. Computing in Science & Engineering, 19(5), 58-67.
- Alexandron, G., Armoni, M., Gordon, M., & Harel, D. (2017). Teaching scenario-based programming: an additional paradigm for the high school computer science curriculum, Part 2. Computing in Science & Engineering, 19(6), 64-71.