Parsons problems are an effective scaffolding activity for coding. The development of Adaptive Parsons problems has provided more flexible scaffolding for students learning to code. However, there is still a gap between Parsons problems and coding tasks which can both challenge and frustrate learners. If you interested in learning more about Nadia Goralski‘s MSc thesis research that bridges this gap you can read her poster paper, “Adapting Between Parsons Problems and Coding Tasks,” published at the 54th ACM Technical Symposium on Computer Science Education (SIGCSE 2023). This research is supervised by Jeremy Bradbury.
Our new adaptive Parsons problems tool includes the adaptation strategies developed in previous work and extending it to include the ability to adapt directly to and from a coding task. This allows students to work at a self-selected level of difficulty from a Parsons problem with no distractors all the way up to writing code. Specifically, students can move between five levels:
- two-line blocks of code with no distractors
- two-line blocks of code with a low number (e.g., 1-2) of distractors
- one-line blocks of code with a low number of distractors
- one-line blocks of code with a moderate number (e.g., 3-4) of distractors
- writing code in an online editor
Level 2:
Level 5:
Demo Video: