Empowering Students with Varying Self-Efficacy by Intelligent Hints to Enhance Programming Education

As programming education booms with more students, teacher shortages pose a challenge. While visual programming languages are used widely in Taiwan, they still require teacher guidance and lack long-term effectiveness. This study investigated using flowcharts to aid students and built a system to automatically generate hints. The findings show flowcharts are beneficial for practicing programming. Interestingly, students with lower self-efficacy relied on more detailed hints, while those with higher self-efficacy needed less help, regardless of the hint format. Additionally, students at different skill levels focused on different aspects of the hints. Beginners needed more program information, intermediate students valued the overall flowchart structure, and advanced students prioritized accurate feedback on their approach. Finally, students with higher self-efficacy requested hints only when encountering errors, while those with lower self-efficacy sought help early and may have still struggled to complete the assignment. These results offer valuable insights into student help-seeking behavior in programming education. This information can be used by educators and system designers to develop targeted learning assistance strategies.