Sharing as a Means for Reflection: Seeing Differences, Understanding Affordances of Peers' Programming Solutions

Abstract

The following paper proposes a design for engaging learners in the practices of comparing and contrasting solutions and understanding the affordances of competing approaches. The first part of this paper presents research that originated in mathematics education and has since been replicated in computer science education with comparable findings and conclusions for the ways in which working with alternate solutions can be particularly felicitous to student learning. The latter half of the paper demonstrates how this research can be integrated into the design of a game by enabling players to share, compare, and reflect on their own solutions and those of their peers as they advance through the game. In the game CodeStitch, players see differences in alternate solutions and, through an implicit moment of reflection, identify the merits of varying approaches (e.g. measured by re-usability / modularity, maintainability, and complexity).