'Ignore These Errors for Now' - How Experts Provide Feedback on Steps Novices Take Towards Solving Programming Problems
Lohr D, Kiesler N, Keuning H, Jeuring J (2025)
Publication Type: Conference contribution
Publication year: 2025
Pages Range: 149-155
Conference Proceedings Title: CompEd 2025: Proceedings of the ACM Global on Computing Education Conference 2025
Event location: Gaborone
Abstract
Formative feedback can be crucial for developing programming competencies, especially among novice learners. Despite the importance of appropriate timing and feedback content, there is often no consensus among experts when and how to give feedback on steps learners take when solving programming tasks. This disagreement is due to the subjective nature of expert assessments, which often rely on personal experience and intuition. To better understand how experts give feedback, we surveyed a diverse group of programming educators on how to give feedback on steps of a novice's programming process. We qualitatively analyzed the open-ended answers and developed a classification representing the categories of human feedback in the context of programming education. The results show that the existing programming feedback taxonomies cannot be applied 1:1 to expert feedback as they were designed for automated systems and cannot adequately cover the nuances of human expert interventions. Thereby, this work has implications for educators aiming to improve instruction and feedback strategies, but also researchers studying (human) feedback and its effects.
Authors with CRIS profile
Involved external institutions
Deutsches Institut für Internationale Pädagogische Forschung (DIPF)
Germany (DE)
Universiteit Utrecht (UU) / Utrecht University
Netherlands (NL)
Germany (DE)
Universiteit Utrecht (UU) / Utrecht University
Netherlands (NL)
How to cite
APA:
Lohr, D., Kiesler, N., Keuning, H., & Jeuring, J. (2025). 'Ignore These Errors for Now' - How Experts Provide Feedback on Steps Novices Take Towards Solving Programming Problems. In CompEd 2025: Proceedings of the ACM Global on Computing Education Conference 2025 (pp. 149-155). Gaborone, BW.
MLA:
Lohr, Dominic, et al. "'Ignore These Errors for Now' - How Experts Provide Feedback on Steps Novices Take Towards Solving Programming Problems." Proceedings of the CompEd 2025: ACM Global on Computing Education Conference 2025, Gaborone 2025. 149-155.
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