Bringing educational theory to end-user programming

Abstract

Recent years have seen the explosive growth of end-user programming. End-user programmers are writing an unprecedented number of programs, due in large part to the significant effort put forth to bring programming power to end users. Unfortunately, this effort has not been supplemented by a comparable effort to help them increase the correctness of these often-faulty programs. One of the most widely used real-world end-user programming paradigms is the spreadsheet. Despite its perceived simplicity, evidence from this paradigm reveals that end-user programs often contain an alarming number of faults. To address this problem we plan to work towards providing the end user with just enough fine grained information they need to help them create correct and reliable spreadsheets. One means to facilitate such help is to develop an on-demand explanatory and advisory system that would encourage exploratory learning by the user and thus effective use of the system's features. The focus of this research is to bring the principles of educational theory to end user programming to help end users build their skills that enhance their information seeking power and thus succeed in creating correct spreadsheets. We think this research would also benefit the educationally disadvantaged populations equally because the disadvantages (one specific disadvantage being lack of programming experience/background) faced by both these groups seem to overlap.