Engaging students in active exploration of programming worked examples

Worked examples can help novice learners develop early schemata from an expert’s solution to a problem. Nonetheless, the worked examples themselves are no guarantee that students will explore these experts’ solutions effectively. This study explores two different approaches to supporting engineering technology students’ learning in an undergraduate introductory programming course: debugging and in-code commenting worked examples. In a Fall semester, students self-explained worked examples using in-code comments (n = 120), while in a Spring semester, students debugged worked examples (spring n = 101). Performance data included the midterm and final exams. Prior exposure to programming courses was taken from a survey at the beginning of each semester. Findings suggest that both the debugging and explaining forms of engagement with worked examples helped students with no prior programming experience to succeed in the course. For the worked examples to be effective, those need to be provided with some explicit form of engagement (i.e., debugging or self-explaining). Combining both strategies following explaining first and debugging second may result in a more effective approach.