Students' Off-Line and On-Line Experiences

Abstract

We investigate novice programmers' use of parentheses and quotes in LISP by examining the activities of students working in both off-line and on-line settings. In keeping with our previous work, we identify three major groups of students working off-line: rule refiners, rule users, and rule seekers. These students differ in the level to which they have refined the “rules” they use. Three major groups of students working on-line are also identified: competent, inconsistent, and ineffective feedback users. In both settings, some students appear to use a perceptual matching strategy, whereby they implement “what looks right” to them rather than making sense of the actual meanings of parentheses and quotes. Students also use computer feedback to augment their success with LISP. In other words, they determine a correct call or definition using the computer feedback rather than careful analysis of the LISP code. Students who do not understand the meaning of parentheses and quotes can arrive at a correct answer through either efficient or inefficient use of computer feedback. Even the best students, rule refiners and competent feedback users, sometimes use perceptual matching and computer feedback to make up for their lack of integrated understanding.