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Trials and Tribulations of Novices Working with the Arduino

Published: 30 July 2019 Publication History

Abstract

Physical computing has grown over the past decade leading to diverse experiences and tools for novices. Despite the variety of tools, Arduinos remain a leading choice in education. However, few studies examine how novices are learning about the programming and electronics concepts, and how tools impact their experience. The research presented reports on the qualitative analysis of a laboratory study in which 31 novices work with the Arduino for the first time. Video and audio recordings captured participants' actions and thoughts as they used the Arduino platform with a blocks-based programming environment, and two electronics prototyping tools-the standard Breadboard and a modular breadboard called BitBlox. The study presents three main contributions to the literature: first, it provides a codebook of the common breakdowns faced by novices; second, it offers insight into the work processes of novices; and third, it demonstrates ways that the tools used by novices can affect their experience.

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Published In

cover image ACM Conferences
ICER '19: Proceedings of the 2019 ACM Conference on International Computing Education Research
July 2019
375 pages
ISBN:9781450361859
DOI:10.1145/3291279
Permission to make digital or hard copies of all or part of this work for personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. Copyrights for components of this work owned by others than the author(s) must be honored. Abstracting with credit is permitted. To copy otherwise, or republish, to post on servers or to redistribute to lists, requires prior specific permission and/or a fee. Request permissions from [email protected].

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Published: 30 July 2019

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Author Tags

  1. arduino
  2. blocks-based programming
  3. novice programming
  4. physical computing
  5. think-aloud

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ICER '19 Paper Acceptance Rate 28 of 137 submissions, 20%;
Overall Acceptance Rate 189 of 803 submissions, 24%

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  • (2024)Characterizing teacher support of debugging with physical computing: Debugging pedagogies in practiceACM Transactions on Computing Education10.1145/3677612Online publication date: 9-Sep-2024
  • (2024)Advancing Creative Physical Computing Education: Designing, Sharing, and Taxonomizing Instructional InterventionsCompanion Publication of the 2024 ACM Designing Interactive Systems Conference10.1145/3656156.3658396(385-388)Online publication date: 1-Jul-2024
  • (2024)Debugging Pathways: Open-Ended Discrepancy Noticing, Causal Reasoning, and InterveningACM Transactions on Computing Education10.1145/365011524:2(1-34)Online publication date: 10-May-2024
  • (2024)touchBase: A Tangible Programming Language for Physical ComputingProceedings of the 16th Conference on Creativity & Cognition10.1145/3635636.3664253(464-469)Online publication date: 23-Jun-2024
  • (2024)Failure Artifact Scenarios to Understand High School Students' Growth in Troubleshooting Physical Computing ProjectsProceedings of the 55th ACM Technical Symposium on Computer Science Education V. 110.1145/3626252.3630855(874-880)Online publication date: 7-Mar-2024
  • (2024)Understanding growth mindset practices in an introductory physical computing classroom: high school students’ engagement with debugging by design activitiesComputer Science Education10.1080/08993408.2024.2317080(1-31)Online publication date: 13-Feb-2024
  • (2023)Çevrimiçi Arduino Programlama Öğretiminde Bağlılık ve Özyeterlilik AlgısıPerception of Engagement and Self-Efficacy in Online Arduino InstructionAkademik Açı10.59597/akademikaci.12977503:2(53-100)Online publication date: 18-Oct-2023
  • (2023)SPEERLoom: An Open-Source Loom Kit for Interdisciplinary Engagement in Math, Engineering, and TextilesProceedings of the 36th Annual ACM Symposium on User Interface Software and Technology10.1145/3586183.3606724(1-15)Online publication date: 29-Oct-2023
  • (2023)Designing scaffolds to support students in debugging e-textilesProceedings of the 22nd Annual ACM Interaction Design and Children Conference10.1145/3585088.3593925(766-768)Online publication date: 19-Jun-2023
  • (2023)Reflections on sustained debugging support: conjecture mapping as a point of departure for instructor feedback on designInstructional Science10.1007/s11251-023-09629-551:6(1043-1078)Online publication date: 24-Apr-2023
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