Learning journals in creative programming assessments: Exposing bugs, issues, and misconceptions

Abstract

This practice paper presents our initial exploration of learning journals as a potential source of information for guiding teaching and learning in creative student-directed programming assessments. Student learning journals were systematically analyzed in order to explore the bugs and misconceptions of novice programmers taking a graphics-programming course. From this analysis emerged common codes and higher-level themes that provided insight into student learning. The results of this case study suggest that learning journals are a rich source of data through which to explore and improve the teaching and learning of creative programming.