Title:
Performance and Use Evaluation of an Electronic Book for Introductory Python Programming
Performance and Use Evaluation of an Electronic Book for Introductory Python Programming
Author(s)
Alvarado, Christine
Morrison, Briana
Ericson, Barbara
Guzdial, Mark
Miller, Brad
Ranum, David L.
Morrison, Briana
Ericson, Barbara
Guzdial, Mark
Miller, Brad
Ranum, David L.
Advisor(s)
Editor(s)
Collections
Supplementary to
Permanent Link
Abstract
Electronic books (ebooks) provide the opportunity to go beyond
the limitations of a physical page. These opportunities
are particularly important for computing education,
where dynamic information is a key characteristic of our domain.
An electronic book can provide opportunities to program
or conduct analyses that are impossible on the physical
page, integrating instructional information with creative
exploration. However, just because ebooks provide these
opportunities does not mean that we know how students
will actually use ebooks in the context of a class. Miller
and Ranum have produced an electronic book for teaching
introductory computing in Python. We explored how students
used the dynamic and novel features of the book, and
correlated that use with performance on learning measures.
We found that students made extensive use of the traditional
programming environment in the book, but that the lesser-used
visualization tool was better correlated with student
performance. In addition, we found that although students
reported high levels of satisfaction with the book, they appeared
to use it much like a traditional textbook, making
less use of many of the interactive features of the book than
we expected.
Sponsor
Date Issued
2012
Extent
Resource Type
Text
Resource Subtype
Technical Report