CoChat
Sign Up
Cited by 198Teaching and Learning ProgrammingScience Education and PedagogyEducational Robotics and Engineering

Using Commutative Assessments to Compare Conceptual Understanding in Blocks-based and Text-based Programs

Weintrop, David, Wilensky, Uri·2015·Proceedings of the eleventh annual International Conference on International Computing Education Research
DOI 10.1145/2787622.2787721
Open this paper in CoChat — free account

Abstract

Blocks-based programming environments are becoming increasingly common in introductory programming courses, but to date, little comparative work has been done to understand if and how this approach affects students' emerging understanding of fundamental programming concepts. In an effort to understand how tools like Scratch and Blockly differ from more conventional text-based introductory programming languages with respect to conceptual understanding, we developed a set of "commutative" assessments. Each multiple-choice question on the assessment includes a short program that can be displayed in either a blocks- based or text-based form. The set of potential answers for each question includes the correct answer along with choices informed by prior research on novice programming misconceptions. In this paper we introduce the Commutative Assessment, discuss the theoretical and practical motivations for the assessment, and present findings from a study that used the assessment. The study had 90 high school students take the assessment at three points over the course of the first ten weeks of an introduction to programming course, alternating the modality (blocks vs. text) for each question over the course of the three administrations of the assessment. Our analysis reveals differences on performance between blocks-based and text-based questions as well as differences in the frequency of misconceptions based on the modality. Future work, potential implications, and limitations of…

Integrity signals

Registry

Crossref · 10.1145/2787622.2787721

Cites

72 of 72 references verified0 citation errors · 0 not checkable

Statistics

Recomputing p-values needs the paper’s full text.

Claims the paper makes

This paper’s full text isn’t openly available, so its claims and self-check weren’t run. The registry and citation checks still apply.

Claims other papers make about this one

Each is checked against this paper’s own text: does it say what the citing paper says it does?

  • The pre-test, and isomorphic post-test1 and post-test2, were adapted from the block-based version of the Commutative Assessments, with 16 multiple-choice questions on variables, loops, procedures, and conditionals.

    “The pre-test, and isomorphic post-test1 and post-test2, were adapted from the block-based version of the Commutative Assessments [25], with 16 multiple-choice questions on variables, loops, procedures, and conditionals.”

    From Exploring the Impact of Worked Examples in a Novice Programming Environment (2019) · cites this paper as [25]

Cites

Flagged first, then by citations

1 of the 73 references couldn’t be matched to a known paper.

Cited by

Sorted by citations

Related

Authors
Weintrop, D., & Wilensky, U.
Affiliations
Northwestern University (US)
ORCID
Venue
Proceedings of the eleventh annual International Conference on International Computing Education Research
Publisher
ACM
Published
2015-08-09
Pages
101-110
DOI
10.1145/2787622.2787721
OpenAlex
W2016385238
Cited by
198
References
73
Citations by year
2026: 6 · 2025: 4 · 2024: 6 · 2023: 13 · 2022: 19 · 2021: 20 · 2020: 24 · 2019: 59 · 2018: 12 · 2017: 20 · 2016: 10 · 2015: 5
FWCI
11.21
Type
conference paper
Language
en
Open access
closed
Licence
www.acm.org/publications/policies/copyright_policy#Background (vor)
Locations
ACM Conference on International Computing Education Research (ICER) (publishedVersion)
Topics
  • Physical Sciences › Computer Science › Computer Science Applications › Teaching and Learning Programming
  • Social Sciences › Education › Science Education and Pedagogy
  • Physical Sciences › Computer Science › Artificial Intelligence › Educational Robotics and Engineering
Keywords
text-based programming, introductory programming, conceptual understanding, Scratch, Blockly, high school students

About these checks

Registry, retraction, Cites and statistics results are computed, not judged, with one exception: a printed reference that no index lists is read once by a model before it counts as a citation error. Claims are extracted by a model and kept only when their quote appears verbatim in the text; each cited source is then checked, with a model’s help, for whether it says what the claim relies on. Those verdicts can be wrong — read the claim’s quote and the cited source before relying on one.

Statistics and arithmetic are recomputed, not judged.

Confidence bands are shown only for fields calibrated on our annotated test set. None is calibrated yet, so no band is shown.

What counts as a claim ›How we measure confidence ›How we check this ›

Are you an author, or do you see a problem with this page? Request a review