About using js-parsons to add interactive exercices

[twitwi]

This issue is to track discussion and progress, following an old mailing list discussion, pasted below:

[twitwi]

Mail from @gvwilson

Via a post by Mark Guzdial [1], I found links to these two papers:

a) Parsons and Haden: Parson's Programming Puzzles: A Fun and Effective Learning Tool for First Programming Courses [2]

b) Ihantola and Karavirta: Two-Dimensional Parson's Puzzles: The Concept, Tools, and First Observations [3]

The first one introduces a programming exercise in which learners are given the lines of code they need to solve a problem, and have to put them in order. The second describes a tool for doing this with Python code (where lines need to be indented as well as sorted), and a Javascript widget for doing this in a web page. It would be really cool if we could incorporate this into some of our lessons - anyone want to take a crack at it and report back? I'd really like to know:

1. Does the tool work well enough to be worth adopting?
2. Can we nest it in our lessons (which are written in Markdown) without heroic mind-bending effort and/or use of quantum entanglement?

Cheers, Greg

[1] https://computinged.wordpress.com/2015/12/09/blog-post-2000-barbara-ericson-proposes/

[2] http://crpit.com/confpapers/CRPITV52Parsons.pdf

[3] http://www.jite.org/documents/Vol10/JITEv10IIPp119-132Ihantola944.pdf

[twitwi]

Mail from @twitwi

Thanks Greg for sharing this tool.

From what I tried in 20 minutes, it seems that :

• the project is alive [1]
• and works well [2]
• and can be made to work nice on touch-based interfaces [3]
• and seems to be easy to intregrate, from what I've seen

From a teaching perspective, I feel it is a good intermediate between “reading code” and “writing code”. I'll surely try it in my own courses.

Right now, I cannot commit to integrating (considering the technical part) it in swc lessons but I'll keep it in my todo list.

Cheers, Rémi

[1] https://github.com/js-parsons/js-parsons [2] http://js-parsons.github.io/ [3] https://github.com/js-parsons/js-parsons/issues/22

[twitwi]

And some actual progress, with 3 working examples, without too much boilerplate: (these are work in progress and might be updated with time)

• demo (3 of the challenges): http://twitwi.github.io/python-novice-inflammation/02-loop.html
• source for these (the first challenge is the most "low level"): https://github.com/twitwi/python-novice-inflammation/commit/2f72807d9ade39a35e04205cc68a11db6c3beaa3

It may be early but, feedback's still welcome.

[twitwi]

The demo is updated [2]. It should be (slightly) less ugly, responsive, and using an updated python evaluator [2][3].

[1] http://twitwi.github.io/python-novice-inflammation/02-loop.html [2] https://github.com/js-parsons/js-parsons/issues/25 [3] https://github.com/twitwi/skulpt/tree/skulpt-parsons

[rbeagrie]

That is seriously cool. Demo works fine and is very responsive for me. The raw markdown code for the first two challenges is simple enough that I think I could figure out how to write a new challenge from those, but the third one is a little obtuse, so we might need some documentation on how to add challenges for new contributors.

[tbekolay]

Works for me, very cool! The markdown source seems pretty good to me. It adds a lot of JS to the repo; not sure if that's an issue, but if it is we could have these examples live in a different repo that is linked from the main one. Is there any hope of this working for non-Python lessons?

[andreww]

This looks very useful. As well as the python novice case, I imagine it would be good as a starting point for an intermediate python lesson where people are more likely to have different initial background and self-paced material may be helpful.

One gremlin - on Chrome on a mac - the heading on the feedback for the first two examples says "Wrong output" although it is right and the box turns green (not red).

[gvwilson]

I really like this - but I'm confused by the message from this particular case:

Good work! Have you pointed the library's creators at it? Greg

[iglpdc]

I really like it and I think it's an awesome tool. But, I have two concerns:

• I think it makes harder for novice contributors to create challenges, which after typos it the easiest thing to start contributing
• I think it's great for a solo learner (who does not have another way to get feedback), but I don't see the use in a workshop when the instructor can discuss the solutions in the detail. I also think it would break the workshop flow, it would require to switch from Jupyter to the lesson back and forth.

So my suggestion is to use this somehow limited and marked with a different callout, so instructors have the option to decide what to do. We could use "Challenge" as it is now for non-interactive challenges and something like "Try in on your own" or "Challenge at home" (that one is kind of silly, but you know what I mean) and maybe a slightly different look.

Workshop instructors and novice contributors could still use and submit "regular" challenges if they want to avoid the complication, but we'll have a more attractive lesson for solo learners.

On Mon, Mar 14, 2016 at 8:40 AM, Greg Wilson notifications@github.com wrote:

I really like this - but I'm confused by the message from this particular case:

Good work! Have you pointed the library's creators at it? Greg

— Reply to this email directly or view it on GitHub https://github.com/swcarpentry/lesson-template/issues/293#issuecomment-196293947 .

[wking]

On Mon, Mar 14, 2016 at 03:54:39AM -0700, Trevor Bekolay wrote:

Is there any hope of this working for non-Python lessons?

I'd guess that it would be fairly straightforward to add other languages that have been ported to in-browser JavaScript (the Python handling is based on Skulpt 1).

[gvwilson]

Moved to https://github.com/swcarpentry/styles/issues/54.