Stump, T. J., & Kashani Motlagh, A. D., & Kecskemety, K. M. (2024, June), Student Experiences with Parsons Problems in a First-Year Engineering Course   Paper presented at 2024 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition, Portland, Oregon. 10.18260/1-2--48010

\bibitem{asee_peer_48010}
  Stump, T. J., \& Kashani Motlagh, A. D., \& Kecskemety, K. M. (2024, June), \emph{Student Experiences with Parsons Problems in a First-Year Engineering Course }
  Paper presented at 2024 ASEE Annual Conference \& Exposition, Portland, Oregon.
  10.18260/1-2--48010

Tyler James Stump, Abbey Darya Kashani Motlagh, and Krista M Kecskemety.  "Student Experiences with Parsons Problems in a First-Year Engineering Course ".  2024 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition, Portland, Oregon, 2024, June.  ASEE Conferences, 2024.  https://peer.asee.org/48010 Internet.  24 Feb, 2025

\bibitem{asee_peer_48010}
  Tyler James Stump, Abbey Darya Kashani Motlagh, and Krista M Kecskemety.
  "Student Experiences with Parsons Problems in a First-Year Engineering Course ".
  \emph{2024 ASEE Annual Conference \& Exposition, Portland, Oregon, 2024, June}.
  ASEE Conferences, 2024.
  https://peer.asee.org/48010 Internet.  24 Feb, 2025

@INPROCEEDINGS{asee_peer_48010
author = "Tyler James Stump, Abbey Darya Kashani Motlagh, and Krista M Kecskemety"
title = "Student Experiences with Parsons Problems in a First-Year Engineering Course "
booktitle = "2024 ASEE Annual Conference \& Exposition"
year = "2024"
month = "June"
address = "Portland, Oregon"
publisher = "ASEE Conferences"
note = {https://peer.asee.org/48010}
number = {10.18260/1-2--48010}
}

TY  - CPAPER
AB  - Computational skillsets have become ubiquitous in introductory engineering courses to equip the next generation of engineers to solve modern-day problems during the technological age. Computing Education Researchers focused on improving computing curriculum development, assessment mechanisms, and computational activities to support learning in these contexts. Programmers in the elementary stages of development are challenged with disentangling the dense syntactical thinking prescribed in code creation requiring innovative approaches to pedagogical decisions in aligning activities that proactively mitigate these challenges. One such computational activity, Parsons Problems, is an effective tool to support introductory programmers in mitigating frustration associated with syntactical debugging for students, contributing to attrition in beginner programmers.  Parsons Problems are grounded in Cognitive Load Theory to reduce extrinsic cognitive load by separating syntactical thinking from code writing, thus supporting a wide range of computing mastery as well, which is often the landscape in first-year engineering programs. Despite the support that Parsons Problems provides they have not been significantly studied to better understand diverse student experiences when engaging with these computational activities. This study, at a First-Year Engineering Program at a large midwestern university, works to identify the features of these activities that impact the student experience and prioritize these features for optimization by understanding the prevalence of student experiences by feature. Using a thematic codebook, eleven unique features of Parsons Problems were identified that impact student experiences when engaging with them including difficulty, group dynamics, and accessibility. Utility value and group dynamics were found to be the most frequent features to positively impact student experiences, while the difficulty was found to be the most consistent critique suggested further investigation into ways to optimize these learning tools to better support student learning in computing concepts. 
AU  - Tyler James Stump
AU  - Abbey Darya Kashani Motlagh
AU  - Krista M Kecskemety
CY  - Portland, Oregon
DA  - 2024/06/23
PB  - ASEE Conferences
TI  - Student Experiences with Parsons Problems in a First-Year Engineering Course 
UR  - https://peer.asee.org/48010
DO  - 10.18260/1-2--48010
ER  -