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A Flipped Systematic Debugging Approach to Enhance Elementary Students’ Program Debugging Performance and Optimize Cognitive Load

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Title: A Flipped Systematic Debugging Approach to Enhance Elementary Students’ Program Debugging Performance and Optimize Cognitive Load
Authors: Gao, Xuemin, Hew, Khe Foon
Publisher Information: SAGE Publications
Publication Year: 2023
Collection: University of Hong Kong: HKU Scholars Hub
Subject Terms: cognitive load, elementary education, flipped classroom, program debugging teaching, scratch
Description: Reintroducing computer science (CS) education in K–12 schools to promote computational thinking (CT) has attracted significant attention among scholars and educators. Among the several essential components included in CS and CT education, program debugging is an indispensable skill. However, debugging teaching has often been overlooked in K–12 contexts, and relevant empirical studies are lacking in the literature. Moreover, novices generally have poor performance in domain knowledge and strategic knowledge concerning debugging. They also consistently experience a high cognitive burden in debugging learning. To address these gaps, we developed a flipped systematic debugging approach combined with a systematic debugging process (SDP) and the modeling method. A quasi-experimental study was conducted to explore the effectiveness of this flipped systematic debugging approach, in which 83 fifth-grade students attended the flipped debugging training lessons with the SDP–modeling method, and 75 fifth-grade students attended the unassisted flipped debugging training lessons without the SDP–modeling method. The results indicated that flipped debugging training using the SDP–modeling method improved students’ debugging skills. The results from the questionnaire showed that the proposed teaching approach increased the students’ investment in germane cognitive load by promoting schema construction. It also helped reduce students’ intrinsic and extraneous cognitive load in learning.
Document Type: article in journal/newspaper
Language: English
Relation: Journal of Educational Computing Research; 1095; WOS:000969342300001; 1064; https://hub.hku.hk/handle/10722/341878; 61
DOI: 10.1177/07356331221133560
Availability: https://hub.hku.hk/handle/10722/341878
https://doi.org/10.1177/07356331221133560
Rights: This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.
Accession Number: edsbas.AC3312D
Database: BASE
Description
Abstract:Reintroducing computer science (CS) education in K–12 schools to promote computational thinking (CT) has attracted significant attention among scholars and educators. Among the several essential components included in CS and CT education, program debugging is an indispensable skill. However, debugging teaching has often been overlooked in K–12 contexts, and relevant empirical studies are lacking in the literature. Moreover, novices generally have poor performance in domain knowledge and strategic knowledge concerning debugging. They also consistently experience a high cognitive burden in debugging learning. To address these gaps, we developed a flipped systematic debugging approach combined with a systematic debugging process (SDP) and the modeling method. A quasi-experimental study was conducted to explore the effectiveness of this flipped systematic debugging approach, in which 83 fifth-grade students attended the flipped debugging training lessons with the SDP–modeling method, and 75 fifth-grade students attended the unassisted flipped debugging training lessons without the SDP–modeling method. The results indicated that flipped debugging training using the SDP–modeling method improved students’ debugging skills. The results from the questionnaire showed that the proposed teaching approach increased the students’ investment in germane cognitive load by promoting schema construction. It also helped reduce students’ intrinsic and extraneous cognitive load in learning.
DOI:10.1177/07356331221133560