Programming, Problem Solving, and Self-Awareness: Effects of Explicit Guidance
Open accessAbstract
More people are learning to code than ever, but most learning opportunities do not explicitly teach the problem solving skills necessary to succeed at open-ended programming problems. In this paper, we present a new approach to impart these skills, consisting of: 1) explicit instruction on programming problem solving, which frames coding as a process of translating mental representations of problems and solutions into source code, 2) a method of visualizing and monitoring progression through six problem solving stages, 3) explicit, on-demand prompts for learners to reflect on their strategies when seeking help from instructors, and 4) context-sensitive help embedded in a code editor that reinforces the problem solving instruction. We experimentally evaluated the effects of our intervention across two 2-week web development summer camps with 48 high school students, finding that the intervention increased productivity, independence, programming self-efficacy, metacognitive awareness, and growth mindset. We discuss the implications of these results on learning technologies and classroom instruction.
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Metacognitive capabilities-specifically, an ability to maintain agency and critical judgment when presented with external solutions-are essential to the effective use of GenAI for programming.
“This growing body of evidence underscores the importance of metacognitive capabilities-specifically, an ability to maintain agency and critical judgment when presented with external solutions-as essential to the effective use of GenAI for programming.”
From The Effects of GitHub Copilot on Computing Students' Programming Effectiveness, Efficiency, and Processes in Brownfield Coding Tasks (2025) · cites this paper as [23]
The Introduction says metacognitive awareness matters for learning to code, and the Discussion and Future Work section links recognizing effective and ineffective strategies to more independent problem solving. The paper studies introductory programming with instructional prompts and hints; it does not establish that maintaining agency and critical judgment over GenAI-generated solutions is essential to using GenAI effectively. (LLM, conf=0.86)
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It's Like Python But: Towards Supporting Transfer of Programming Language Knowledge
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Making End User Development More Natural
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Will Students Write Tests Early Without Coercion?✱
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Expresso: Building Responsive Interfaces with Keyframes
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Socially interactive industrial robots: a PAD model of flow for emotional co-regulation
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Modelling the Use of Abstraction in Algorithmic Problem Solving
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Socially Interactive Agents as Cobot Avatars
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- Authors
- Loksa, D., Ko, A. J., Jernigan, W., Oleson, A., Mendez, C. J., & Burnett, M. M.
- Affiliations
- University of Washington (US)
- Oregon State University, Corvallis, OR, USA
- Oregon State University (US)
- Venue
- Proceedings of the 2016 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems
- Publisher
- ACM
- Published
- 2016-05-07
- Pages
- 1449-1461
- OpenAlex
- W2407505401
- Cited by
- 223
- References
- 62
- Citations by year
- 2026: 23 · 2025: 18 · 2024: 29 · 2023: 22 · 2022: 20 · 2021: 17 · 2020: 17 · 2019: 55 · 2018: 10 · 2017: 11 · 2016: 1
- FWCI
- 20.48
- Type
- conference paper
- Language
- en
- Open access
- bronze
- doi.org
- Locations
- CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (publishedVersion)
- Funders
- National Science Foundation (1240786, 1314399, 1153625)
- Topics
- Physical Sciences › Computer Science › Computer Science Applications › Teaching and Learning Programming
- Social Sciences › Psychology › Developmental and Educational Psychology › Innovative Teaching and Learning Methods
- Social Sciences › Education › Problem and Project Based Learning
- Keywords
- programming problem solving, self-awareness, metacognition, growth mindset, programming self-efficacy, problem-solving stages, context-sensitive help, high school students, learner autonomy, programming education
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