Implementing Faded Parsons Problems in a Very Large CS1 Course

The poster shows early results implementing Faded Parsons problems at a large public R1 university in a 1000+ enrollment CS1 course. Assignments traditionally involved open-ended code-writing questions that had little scaffolding, and many students spent long periods of independent time working on them. We attempted to improve scaffolding via Faded Parsons problems (FPPs)-a new variant to popular Parsons problems-where students fill in blanks in addition to rearranging lines of code into a valid program. We integrated these problems into assignments by adding an FPP with similar concepts for each code-writing question. By first learning the concepts within the constraints of an FPP, we hoped students would be able to identify and apply those concepts once faced with the code-writing questions. Our findings suggest that students took fewer attempts on code-writing problems than in a previous semester, and survey results indicate that the majority of students found FPPs beneficial as an easier introduction to programming, and that they were good preparation for hand written exams.