Providing social presence in online programming classes

Abstract

Online programming classes provide affordable, convenient, and time-saving ways of learning to program. However, learners in online classes often suffer from low engagement from the course content. In the thesis, I tried to resolve this problem by designing and building two systems that support learners in online programming classes with interactive course materials and a social presence. First, I built Pythonpad, a JavaScript library that allows educators to easily embed web-based programming tools in their course websites at low cost. The evaluation study with 12 educators showed that they can easily use Pythonpad to build a website that serves interactive programming exercises, and Pythonpad supports essential features of Python to teach a CS1 course to the learners. Based on Pythonpad, I also built Cocode, a web application that allows learners to share their programming environments with their co-learners so that learners feel a social presence from each other in the online classes. The evaluation studies showed that the learners using Cocode participate in more course materials for on-demand online classes, and they also feel a more social presence in Cocode-based online classes when compared to the online CS1 class in KAIST with conventional web-based programming tools and live video-chat lectures.