Sam Hames

Ten quick tips for teaching programming | PLOS Computational Biology

For example, a growing number of educators are including Parsons Problems in their pedagogic repertoire [20, 27]. Rather than writing programs from scratch, learners are given the lines of code they need to solve a problem, but in jumbled order. Reordering them to solve the problem correctly allows them to concentrate on mastering control flow without having to devote mental energy to recalling syntax or the specifics of library functions. They are also liked by learners; Ericson et al. [28] found that learners were more likely to attempt Parsons Problems than nearby multiple choice questions in an e-book.