Determining the Effectiveness of Live Coding on Student Learning in Introductory Programming

This project aims to serve the national interest by increasing the success of students in introductory programming courses. Teaching students how to program remains a significant challenge in undergraduate computing education, as failure rates in introductory courses remain high. This project will test a commonly used teaching approach called live coding that may promote student learning of programming skills.

When using live coding, instructors work through the process of programming in front of students during class, with the instructors explaining their thinking as they go. Despite the popularity of live coding as a teaching technique, its effectiveness has not been carefully studied or compared to other teaching techniques. This project will experimentally evaluate the effectiveness of live coding on student learning in an introductory programming course.

To do so, it will compare student learning outcomes when lectures include a live coding approach versus when static code examples are used instead. Better understanding how live coding affects student learning could increase use of more effective teaching practices in programming classes, which in turn could increase student success in introductory computer science.

Given the growing unmet need for trained computing professionals to fill well-paying positions, this project has the potential to help grow a technologically capable workforce and to ensure that students from all backgrounds have opportunities to pursue computing careers.

Prior research on live coding has shown that students enjoy live coding because it is dynamic, holds their attention, and allows them to ask "what-if" questions about the code itself. A major limitation of previous studies regarding the effectiveness of live coding is how the studies assessed student learning: the assessments (e.g., exams, assignments) primarily measured students' conceptual understanding of programming, but did not measure the programming process itself.

To address this limitation, this project will: 1) design and develop assessments to measure programming process using in-person student observations and process data generated by the integrated development environment; and 2) conduct controlled experiments to study and evaluate the effectiveness of live coding versus static code examples on both students’ conceptual understanding and their programming process. If the hypothesis is supported that live coding benefits students with little or no prior programming experience, greater implementation of live coding pedagogy could support increased retention of students in computing, thus increasing the diversity of the computer science workforce.

The NSF IUSE: EHR Program supports research and development projects to improve the effectiveness of STEM education for all students. Through the Engaged Student Learning track, the program supports the creation, exploration, and implementation of promising practices and tools.

This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.