DualModality Instruction and Learning By Jeremiah Blanchard Christina

Dual-Modality Instruction and Learning By Jeremiah Blanchard, Christina Gardner-Mc. Cune, Lisa Anthony University of Florida, Gainesville March, 2020 Presented by Ellis Horowitz

Focus of the Paper • To help students learn how to program, people have developed Instructional programming environments • Text-based environments, e. g. Eclipse • Block-based environments such as Scratch (scratch. mit. edu), Alice (www. alice. org) avoid syntax to emphasize computational thinking • Dual-Modality environments provide both blocks and texts so students can master both computational thinking and syntax • This paper addresses the question • How do dual-modality programming environments and dual-modality instruction support learning of programming as opposed to traditional text-based approaches 2

Methodology • In two 16 -week semesters an introductory CS class (called CS 1) was taught using text-based instruction the first semester and dualmodality instruction the second semester • Control group of 248 students were asked to program using Intelli. J IDEA, and IDE for text-base programming • Intervention group of 425 students were given BOTH Intelli. J IDEA and Droplet Dual-Modality IDE plugin for Java • Learning was measured by – SCS 1 course examination questions – Student surveys 3

Multiple Representations of Programming Language Constructs (a) (b) Droplet, Code. org; blocks(a) with text overlaid (b) 4

Plugin for Intelli. J IDEA 5

Prior Work • • • Weintrop found that dual-modality environments provide some of the advantages of both blocks and text for high school students: [33]. Weintrop and Holbert found that, even after moving to work in text, learners in dual-modality environments returned to blocks when new constructs were introduced, [34]. Bau et al. conducted a study with eight public middle school students across four after-school sessions who had no prior programming experience [4]. After a period of time students gravitated towards text Later, our own prior work with middle school students showed that some students who used dual-modality environments to transition from blocks to text had more positive views of text programming compared to students who moved directly from blocks to text [6]. However, despite these benefits to perception and confidence, it is not yet known if dual-modality environments and instruction help students learn programming concepts more effectively than traditional text-based approaches. 6

Topics Covered by Semester

Ethnic Distribution of Students 8

Data Collection • • • Text-based exams were used in both semesters (multiple choice, short answer, code reading and writing) Perception surveys asked students what sort of instruction they favored The Second CS 1 Assessment (SCS 1) is one of the bestknown validated tests of programming knowledge. It is a multiple-choice test written in pseudo-code, covering concepts commonly presented in Computer Science 1 (CS 1) courses. 9

Analyzing the Data Examining the two columns one sees that the Invt group does better on E 1, E 2 and final exam, while the Ctrl group does slightly better on SCS 1 10

Conclusions • Students who learned via dual-modality instruction and tools scored higher on course assessments, indicating that they developed a deeper understanding of programming concepts and better skill in programming • College level instructors may wish to use dual-modality instruction 11