@article{wang_limke_bobbadi_isvik_catete_barnes_price_2024, title={Idea Builder: Motivating Idea Generation and Planning for Open-Ended Programming Projects through Storyboarding}, url={https://doi.org/10.1145/3626252.3630872}, DOI={10.1145/3626252.3630872}, abstractNote={In computing classrooms, building an open-ended programming project engages students in the process of designing and implementing an idea of their own choice. An explicit planning process has been shown to help students build more complex and ambitious open-ended projects. However, novices encounter difficulties in exploring and creatively expressing ideas during planning. We present Idea Builder, a storyboarding-based planning system to help novices visually express their ideas. Idea Builder includes three features: 1) storyboards to help students express a variety of ideas that map easily to programming code, 2) animated example mechanics with example actors to help students explore the space of possible ideas supported by the programming environments, and 3) synthesized starter code to help students easily transition from planning to programming. Through two studies with high school coding workshops, we found that students self-reported as feeling creative and feeling easy to communicate ideas; having access to animated example mechanics of an actor help students to build those actors in their plans and projects; and that most students perceived the synthesized starter code from Idea Builder as helpful and time-saving.}, journal={PROCEEDINGS OF THE 55TH ACM TECHNICAL SYMPOSIUM ON COMPUTER SCIENCE EDUCATION, SIGCSE 2024, VOL. 1}, author={Wang, Wengran and Limke, Ally and Bobbadi, Mahesh and Isvik, Amy and Catete, Veronica and Barnes, Tiffany and Price, Thomas W.}, year={2024}, pages={1402–1408} }
 @article{wang_rao_kwatra_milliken_dong_gomes_martin_catete_isvik_barnes_et al._2023, title={A Case Study on When and How Novices Use Code Examples in Open-Ended Programming}, url={https://doi.org/10.1145/3587102.3588774}, DOI={10.1145/3587102.3588774}, abstractNote={Many students rely on examples when learning to program, but they often face barriers when incorporating these examples into their own code and learning the concepts they present. As a step towards designing effective example interfaces that can support student learning, we investigate novices' needs and strategies when using examples to write code. We conducted a study with 12 pairs of high school students working on open-ended game design projects, using a system that allows students to browse examples based on their functionality, and to view and copy the example code. We analyzed interviews, screen recordings, and log data, identifying 5 moments when novices request examples, and 4 strategies that arise when students use examples. We synthesize these findings into principles that can inform the design of future example systems to better support students.}, journal={PROCEEDINGS OF THE 2023 CONFERENCE ON INNOVATION AND TECHNOLOGY IN COMPUTER SCIENCE EDUCATION, ITICSE 2023, VOL 1}, author={Wang, Wengran and Rao, Yudong and Kwatra, Archit and Milliken, Alexandra and Dong, Yihuan and Gomes, Neeloy and Martin, Sarah and Catete, Veronica and Isvik, Amy and Barnes, Tiffany and et al.}, year={2023}, pages={82–88} }
 @article{wang_bacher_isvik_limke_sthapit_shi_tabarsi_tran_catete_barnes_et al._2023, title={Investigating the Impact of On-Demand Code Examples on Novices' Open-Ended Programming Projects}, url={https://doi.org/10.1145/3568813.3600141}, DOI={10.1145/3568813.3600141}, abstractNote={Background and Context: Open-ended programming projects encourage novice students to choose and pursue projects based on their own ideas and interests, and are widely used in many introductory programming courses. However, novice programmers encounter challenges exploring and discovering new ideas, implementing their ideas, and applying unfamiliar programming concepts and APIs. Code examples are one of the primary resources students use to apply code usage patterns and learn API knowledge, but little work has investigated the effect of having access to examples on students’ open-ended programming experience. Objectives: In this work, we evaluate the impact of code examples on open-ended programming, through a study with 46 local high school students in a full-day coding workshop. Method: We conducted a controlled study, where half of the students had full access to 37 code examples using an example browser system called Example Helper and the other half had 5 standard, tutorial examples. Findings: We found that students who had access to all 37 code examples used a significantly larger variety of code APIs, perceived the programming as relatively more creative, but also experienced a higher task load. We also found suggestive evidence of a better post-assignment performance from the example group, showing that some students were able to learn and apply the knowledge they learned from examples to a new programming task.}, journal={PROCEEDINGS OF THE 2023 ACM CONFERENCE ON INTERNATIONAL COMPUTING EDUCATION RESEARCH V.1, ICER 2023 V1}, author={Wang, Wengran and Bacher, John and Isvik, Amy and Limke, Ally and Sthapit, Sandeep and Shi, Yang and Tabarsi, Benyamin T. and Tran, Keith and Catete, Veronica and Barnes, Tiffany and et al.}, year={2023}, pages={464–475} }
 @article{catete_isvik_hill_2022, title={A Framework for Socially-Relevant Service-Learning Internship Experiences for High School Students}, DOI={10.1145/3478431.3499355}, abstractNote={By age 15 girls start to lose interest in STEM, and less than 50% consider a STEM-related career. Providing hands-on internship opportunities has been one of the leading ways to help connect students with exploring computing careers; however, these opportunities are limited in high school. We propose a framework for a university-led high school internship initiative that focuses on service learning, co-design, and the propagation of engaging computing curricula for younger audiences. We piloted this model virtually in summer 2021, with high school students and teachers as interns mentored by university role models. Teams led the development and implementation of computing-infused curricula for a virtual summer coding camp. In this article, we share our framework and review the importance of service-learning for recruiting diverse participants and the use of co-design as a way to broker relationships between developers and community stakeholders. Additionally, we provide preliminary outcomes of our internship model on student and teacher participants gathered from qualitative data including end-of-summer presentations and post-program interviews.}, journal={PROCEEDINGS OF THE 53RD ACM TECHNICAL SYMPOSIUM ON COMPUTER SCIENCE EDUCATION (SIGCSE 2022), VOL 1}, author={Catete, Veronica and Isvik, Any and Hill, Marnie}, year={2022}, pages={815–821} }
 @article{limke_milliken_catete_gransbury_isvik_price_martens_barnes_2022, title={Case Studies on the use of Storyboarding by Novice Programmers}, DOI={10.1145/3502718.3524749}, abstractNote={Our researchers seek to support students in building block-based programming projects that are motivating and engaging as well as valuable practice in learning to code. A difficult part of the programming process is planning. In this research, we explore how novice programmers used a custom-built planning tool, PlanIT, contrasted against how they used storyboarding when planning games. In a three-part study, we engaged novices in planning and programming three games: a maze game, a break-out game, and a mashup of the two. In a set of five case studies, we show how five pairs of students approached the planning and programming of these three games, illustrating that students felt more creative when storyboarding rather than using PlanIT. We end with a discussion on the implications of this work for designing supports for novices to plan open-ended projects.}, journal={PROCEEDINGS OF THE 27TH ACM CONFERENCE ON INNOVATION AND TECHNOLOGY IN COMPUTER SCIENCE EDUCATION, ITICSE 2022, VOL 1}, author={Limke, Ally and Milliken, Alexandra and Catete, Veronica and Gransbury, Isabella and Isvik, Amy and Price, Thomas and Martens, Chris and Barnes, Tiffany}, year={2022}, pages={318–324} }
 @article{isvik_catete_elmore_barnes_2021, title={Examining Equity in Computing-Infused Lessons Made by Novices}, DOI={10.1109/RESPECT51740.2021.9620700}, abstractNote={In this study, we examine 10 computing-infused lessons with high equity scores created by high school interns. These projects were part of a larger corpus of 90+ projects made in summer 2020 for middle school and high school classrooms and the projects were evaluated using the Teacher Accessibility, Equity, and Content (TEC) rubric. This article examines the observed extensive evidence for equity in these 10 projects to determine how meaningful these equity scores are, what themes are present across projects, and to provide curriculum developers with strategies for ensuring their activities utilize equitable practices to be intentionally inclusive of all students.}, journal={IEEE STCBP RESPECT CONFERENCE: 2021 RESEARCH ON EQUITY AND SUSTAINED PARTICIPATION IN ENGINEERING, COMPUTING, AND TECHNOLOGY (RESPECT)}, author={Isvik, Amy and Catete, Veronica and Elmore, Erynn and Barnes, Tiffany}, year={2021}, pages={157–161} }
 @article{isvik_catete_bell_gransbury_barnes_2021, title={Infusing Computing: Moving a Service Oriented Internship Program Online}, DOI={10.1109/RESPECT51740.2021.9620644}, abstractNote={As virtual conferencing technology becomes more common and situations make in-person experiences difficult or unsafe to host, the need for online internships to support sustained participation in computing increases. We investigate the problem of how to provide a meaningful experiential education program in a virtual environment and serve geographically dispersed participants through our experience with moving a service oriented internship program online. Our computer science internship program leverages high school interns' programming skills and classroom experience to assist teachers in developing computing-infused lessons for their classrooms. Using a combination of synchronous and asynchronous activities, we trained our interns in how to make these lessons and helped interns build community amongst themselves. Our interns created over 90 lessons during the summer and helped over 50 teachers create their own lessons at an infusing computing professional development.}, journal={IEEE STCBP RESPECT CONFERENCE: 2021 RESEARCH ON EQUITY AND SUSTAINED PARTICIPATION IN ENGINEERING, COMPUTING, AND TECHNOLOGY (RESPECT)}, author={Isvik, Amy and Catete, Veronica and Bell, Dave and Gransbury, Isabella and Barnes, Tiffany}, year={2021}, pages={199–203} }