Parson's programming puzzles: a fun and effective learning tool for first programming courses

By D. Parsons, P. Haden. 2006

354 citations recorded by the source corpus.

How researchers see this paper

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Introductory programming: a systematic literature review (2018, background): “new style of exam question, the Parsons problem [495], has been”
Designing for deeper learning in a blended computer science course for middle school students (2015, methodology): “Inspired by Parson’s puzzles (Denny, Luxton-Reilly, & Simon, 2008; Parsons & Haden, 2006), some quiz questions also involved presenting jumbled blocks in Scratch required for a program and having students snap them in correct order.”
Studying the effect of AI Code Generators on Supporting Novice Learners in Introductory Programming (2023, unknown): “Several approaches have been developed to reduce this cognitive load in introductory programming, such as the use of worked examples and similar practice problems [72, 84], or mixed-up code (Parsons) problems [64], where learners are given mixed up fragments that must be placed in the correct order ”
Automated Questionnaires About Students’ JavaScript Programs: Towards Gauging Novice Programming Processes (2023, methodology): “As an example, prior research has shown benefits of Parsons problems [3, 4, 26], and multiple tools for presenting Parsons problems to students have been presented in prior work [9, 13, 15, 38].”