Using Faded Parsons Problems to Provide a More Challenging Scaffold for Code Writing

To make learning how to program cognitively accessible for all, it is important to reevaluate how concepts are taught and scaffolded. Hence, we investigated how learners interact with Faded Parsons problems when provided as optional scaffolding. Faded Parsons problems require learners to drag-and-drop blocks of code into the correct order and indentation as well as fill-in-the-blanks for the code to run successfully. A total of 20 participants were included in this study and were given the option of scaffolding with Faded Parsons problem and hint features to solve seven write-code Python programming problems. Following the experiment, all participants were interviewed to evaluate the effectiveness of the scaffolding. The research design explores video and transcript analysis to get a well-rounded view of the participants' attitudes and relationships with Faded Parsons problems.