PhD Seminar • Human-Computer Interaction — Coding Strip: A New Pedagogical Tool for Learning and Teaching Programming Concepts

Sangho Suh, PhD candidate
David R. Cheriton School of Computer Science

The abstract nature of programming makes learning to code a daunting undertaking for many novice learners. In this work, we advocate the use of comics — a medium capable of presenting abstract ideas in a concrete, familiar way — for introducing coding concepts. We propose a design process and related tools to help students and teachers create coding strips, a form of comic strips that are associated with a piece of code. We conducted two design workshops with students and high school computer science teachers to evaluate the feasibility, strengths, and weaknesses of our approach.