Preferences and Perceptions of Programming Study
Study Conducted by Northwestern University
Contacts
- Graduate Researcher: Caryn Tran, caryn@u.northwestern.edu
- Principal Investigator: Eleanor O’Rourke
Interested?
Fill out Parent Permission Form
We will follow up to invite you to the paid study if you are eligible. If you have any questions, please email caryn@u.northwestern.edu.
We are only accepting participants referred by a teacher in order to verify eligibility. You must provide an official email of a referring teacher in order to be eligible. Thank you.
Activity
- Students will answer a survey about their programming preferences and perceptions.
- Selected students who are interested will be contacted for an optional follow-up interview about their survey response.
Student Benefits
- They get to see what research looks like (learning sciences and human-computer interaction research).
- They will be compensated $15-$50 ($15 for the survey, $35/hr for the interview).
- They will reflect on their preferences and perceptions of programming and learn about new tools for learning programming.
- More?! I’m happy to brainstorm any other ideas that you might think will benefit students!
Consent
- Students need to get parent consent for participating in the study. Participation is completely voluntary.
Teacher’s Responsibility
Teachers need to give students two links and that’s it!
- One link is a link to an online permission form and the other is a link to the interest form.
- This is a great activity for students to complete at the end of the year.
- Results from the study can help you inform your curriculum in the future.
Eligibility
Students should:
- be between the ages of 13 and 18,
- have no more than 1 year of formal high school-level Computer Science or Programming coursework.
- If you are currently enrolled in a Computer Science/Programming class, that’s okay!
- If you’ve taken any courses prior to high school or outside of school, that’s okay too!
- have experience using an educational programming environment
- such as (but not limited to) Scratch, Snap, MakeCode, CodeHS, Alice, CodeCombat, Code.org, AppInventor, and so on.
Timing
- For the 30 minute survey, students can participate at any time (so long as guardian permission is given).\
- For the 1 hour follow-up interview, students who are interested may be contacted by email to select a time that works for them on a Calendly link.
Location
- The survey is completed in Qualtrics wherever the student has internet access.
- The interview is done on Zoom in a password-protected meeting.
