Exploring challenging variations of parsons problems

Introductory programming classes teach students to program using worked examples, code tracing, and code writing exercises. Parsons Problems are an educational innovation in which students unscramble provided lines of code, as a step towards bridging the gap between reading and writing code. Though Parsons Problems have been found effective, there is some evidence that students can use syntactic heuristics to help them solve these problems without fully understanding the solution. To address this limitation, we introduce Faded Parsons Problems, a variation of Parsons Problems where parts of the provided code are incomplete. We explore a specific instantiation of this idea, Blank-Variable Parsons Problems, in which all variable names are blanked out. Unlike another Parsons Problem variation-adding distractor code lines-Blank-Variable Parsons can be automatically created from a solution without additional effort from an instructor. A 75 minute pilot study with CS1 students indicates that solving standard Parsons Problems does not lead to short-term near-transfer in code writing, suggesting a need for problems with less scaffolding. Additionally, students self-report Blank-Variable Parsons as fitting in difficulty between Parsons Problems and code writing, suggesting Blank-Variable Parsons may be one opportunity to fill this gap.