A Survey on Online Learning Preferences for Computer Science and Programming
Abstract
The increasing availability of online documentation is radically changing the way developers and computer science students learn various topics, and programming in particular. Nowadays, a plethora of online learning resources are available, ranging from online University courses and official programming manuals/documentation to video tutorials, screencasts, and discussions available on Question & Answer forums. With the aim of aiding researchers to better understand the usage, advantages, and limitations of this large amount of resources, this paper empirically investigates the learning preferences and needs of computer science students and professional developers related to the use of online resources for learning. We conducted a survey with 205 participants, having different degrees of formal instruction and professional experience in programming. The survey investigated the participants' learning preferences, information seeking behavior, preferred online resources, and learning needs. The study results reveal a preference for combined visual and auditory learning while indicating written tutorials and official documentation as two of the most popular resources currently used by developers and students. The study also indicates that, although online resources are considered valuable, there is a need for better support for searching and browsing this kind of resources.
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Our scoping literature review highlights the CS Education community's primary focus on Open Educational Resources [19, 20], followed by Learning Preferences [16] and Technology Adoption [35].
“Our scoping literature review highlights the CS Education community's primary focus on Open Educational Resources [19, 20], followed by Learning Preferences [16] and Technology Adoption [35].”
Cites
Mining StackOverflow to turn the IDE into a self-confident programming prompter
Ponzanelli, L., Bavota, G., Di Penta, M., Oliveto, R., & Lanza, M. (2014) · Proceedings of the 11th Working Conference on Mining Software Repositories · doi:10.1145/2597073.2597077 · Cited by 240 · see citing works
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Paterson, J., Oyelere, S. S., Dubay, C., & Izu, C. (2025) · Working Group Reports of the ACM Global Computing Education Conference 2025 · doi:10.1145/3815397.3815774
- Authors
- Escobar-Avila, J., Venuti, D., Di Penta, M., & Haiduc, S.
- Affiliations
- Florida State University (US)
- University of Sannio, Italy
- ORCID
- Haiduc, Sonia
- Venue
- 2019 IEEE/ACM 41st International Conference on Software Engineering: Software Engineering Education and Training (ICSE-SEET)
- Publisher
- IEEE
- Published
- 2019-05
- Pages
- 170-181
- OpenAlex
- W2954030112
- Cited by
- 24
- References
- 1
- Citations by year
- 2025: 4 · 2024: 5 · 2023: 5 · 2022: 4 · 2021: 4 · 2020: 1 · 2019: 1
- FWCI
- 2.90
- Type
- conference paper
- Language
- en
- Open access
- closed
- Locations
- IEEE/ACM International Conference on Software Engineering: Software Engineering Education and Training (ICSE-SEET) (publishedVersion)
- Topics
- Physical Sciences › Computer Science › Computer Science Applications › Teaching and Learning Programming
- Physical Sciences › Computer Science › Information Systems › Software Engineering Techniques and Practices
- Physical Sciences › Computer Science › Information Systems › Software Engineering Research
- Keywords
- online learning resources, learning styles, computer science students, professional developers, information seeking, programming education, online documentation, video tutorials, visual and auditory learning, learning needs
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