Workshop [7]

Problem-solving

"How has graphical programming helped you to break down complex problems into smaller parts? Give a concrete example of a situation where you used programming to solve a problem. What did you learn from this experience?"

My first experience with graphical programming was in lower secondary school when we used the turtle logo environment in Informatics class. 

Aside from that, my learning experience was inverse because I first learned text-based programming in my bachelors degree and then towards the end of it, I experimented with graphical programming, first as a learner and afterwards, as a teacher. 

The transition from a text-based to a visual way of programming, even though a common assumption would be that it is much easier than the opposite, I can say was also quite challenging at first. I believe it is very common whilst coding, especially in large projects, that you are not completely aware of what you are doing,or it might get to this brain-frying point where you are debugging for many hours and then suddenly something works and you have no idea why it does. On the other hand, in visual programming in my opinion you are kind of "forced" to understand the logic behind a solution, which sometimes makes it challenging to put together! I remember having a (not huge, but noteworthy) learning curve when I first got involved in Scratch, even though I had experience in all kinds of programming concepts like variables, functions, etc. It was just a very different way of thinking and of going about solving a problem which needed some adjustment from my part.  

A concrete example of a situation where I used graphical programming for problem-solving is this:

Self regulation

"How have you managed your own learning process during the graphical programming process? For example, how do you monitor your progress and make corrections when you notice errors in your program? How do you feel that the programming tool helps you to do this?"

In my own learning experience, I used consistent testing as a method of keeping up with my progress and adjusting my strategies. Again, in comparison to text-based programming, I would say that visual programming tools are very helpful for activating SRL processes such as monitoring and control, because visualizing the steps towards the solution gets much easier, as well as predicting the outcome of a command because you are visualizing the movement of an animated character. In text-based editors correspondingly, there are debugging tools which are really helpful for monitoring the problem-solving progress, but again, in larger projects it is common that a person might be writing a large block of code all at once without testing it, therefore those same SRL processes might not be activated immediately,and the errors that appear afterwards might not be that obvious to "catch" and fix.

Motivation and challenges

"Have you ever had moments when you found graphical programming tasks particularly difficult? How have you managed to stay motivated and keep going? How has receiving feedback on the program (e.g. error messages or malfunctioning algorithms) affected your motivation?"

I believe that the times that I've found graphical programming tasks difficult were simultaneously the times where the task was very uninteresting. Having a visual environment does not necessarily assist in the learning process more than an unplugged or text-based environment. However,one more specific moment was in my first interactions with Scratch. I remember being very frustrated because I couldn't figure out the movement of the cat (the animated character that you're programming). Specifically I remember running the commands in my head and visualizing the movement, and then running the code and it doing something completely different,with usually the cat ending up being upside down. I think it was especially frustrating because of SR and metacognitive processes that I was activating at that time in the Forethought Phase (Zimmerman, 2002), in which I had evaluated this task as an easy task for people with novice programming skills and I put myself on a higher level, but then failed to make it work. 

As for receiving feedback from graphical programming environments, personally I cannot recall times where made a big difference to my level of motivation. If the feedback I was getting was constructive or included hints then it might had impacted me positively to continue working on the task because I felt that I had some sort of guidance but it would not significantly raise my motivation. 

Future Skills

"How do you think the problem-solving and self-regulation skills you have learned through graphical programming can benefit you in the future, for example in other subjects or in life in general?"

For me, working on graphical programming environments and practicing my problem-solving skills had a very positive impact on my confidence as a teacher in STEM education. Before that, even though I had programming experience I felt anxious when kids had questions regarding the coding blocks because I hadn't understood the visual programming logic well myself. After having worked on visual programming for a while, I felt that my viewpoint had expanded and I was more comfortable in facilitating activities in such environments but also explaining programming concepts effectively (e.g loops) to kids using the platform itself and scenarios based on it.

As for the self-regulation skills, now I'm slowly realizing what SR processes I was activating at the time that I was working on graphical programming. I think I'm at a very initial stage yet that I cannot transfer this acquired knowledge to other situations because I'm still gaining awareness around it, after having recently explored the theoretical foundations of SRL.