Encouraging students to think of code as an algorithmic symphony: the effect of feedback regarding algorithmic abstraction during code production

Abstract

Students' ability to reason and abstract about code is an important factor in the development of their expertise in producing code. The literature has primary focused on the correlation between measures of students' ability to abstract about code and other skills. The studies and proposed work in my thesis take a mixed methods approach to understanding the impact of feedback regarding algorithmic abstraction and application of contextual scaffolding to problems on the learner.