Promoting Deliberate Naming Practices in Programming Education: A Set of Interactive Educational Activities
Despite extensive studies from the software engineering community on how naming practices influence programming behavior, the topic receives little attention in education. Prior work indicated little agreement on good naming because it depends on many factors. Students are told that “naming is important” and “should be meaningful,” yet its practical implementation is rarely discussed and feedback is lacking. The current work presents a dialogic teaching approach focused on teaching a critical reflection on naming practices through five activity types: (A) perceptions and experiences, (B) create names, (C) evaluate through ranking, (D) compare codes, and (E) locate a mistake. We also developed, ran, and analyzed a one-hour workshop, that we present here and share our experiences, leading to recommendations for teachers. Our contribution is twofold: (1) we provide a set of (adaptable) activities and exercises for supporting deliberate naming practices, thereby assisting teachers interested in adopting naming practices into their curriculum; (2) we provide insights regarding the student perspective on naming practices, derived from the activities, revealing potential issues and opportunities in teaching the topic.
Thu 5 DecDisplayed time zone: (UTC) Coordinated Universal Time change
12:00 - 13:00 | |||
12:00 30mPaper | Variables and Variable Naming in Popular Programming Textbooks for Children and Novices Conference Vivian van der Werf Leiden Institute of Advanced Computer Sciences, Felienne Hermans Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, Marcus Specht Delft University of Technology, Efthimia Aivaloglou Delft University of Technology | ||
12:30 30mPaper | Promoting Deliberate Naming Practices in Programming Education: A Set of Interactive Educational Activities Conference Vivian van der Werf Leiden Institute of Advanced Computer Sciences, Felienne Hermans Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, Marcus Specht Delft University of Technology, Efthimia Aivaloglou Delft University of Technology |