Capturing and Analyzing Students' Debugging Processes

About the project

Although the field of computer science education has researched how to teach programming for decades, learning to program remains a major challenge for many learners. One key hurdle is debugging, or recognizing and correcting errors, which can be especially frustrating for beginners. To be successful programmers, learners must be able to identify different types of errors and select and apply suitable strategies to solve them. To understand how learners behave during debugging and which steps and problems are most common, the entire debugging process must be examined. This project examines the debugging processes of learners. Based on this analysis, we can also investigate the influence of various factors on the debugging process, such as poor code quality. From there, we can derive starting points for targeted support. Additionally, interventions can be developed that not only simplify debugging, but also enhance overall programming learning and motivation.

Spörer, E. & Michaeli, T. (2025). Investigating Debugging Processes: A Scoping Review In: Proceedings of the 25th Koli Calling International Conference on Computing Education Research (Koli Calling '25), ACM, 2025

Spörer, E. & Michaeli, T. (2025). Eine theoriegeleitete Analyse von Debugging-Prozessen in Scratch. In: INFOS 2025 – 21. GI-Fachtagung Informatik und Schule (pp. 243-248). Stoos. Gesellschaft für Informatik. doi.org/10.18420/infos2025_wi_17