A Kingdom for a Button: Students’ Thoughts about Buttons

Aleksi Lukkarinen; Arto Hellas; Lassi Haaranen

doi:10.1145/3488042.3490170

A Kingdom for a Button: Students’ Thoughts about Buttons

Aleksi Lukkarinen^*, Arto Hellas, Lassi Haaranen

^*Corresponding author for this work

Research output: Chapter in Book/Report/Conference proceeding › Conference article in proceedings › Scientific › peer-review

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Abstract

In learning programming and learning to construct applications with graphical user interfaces, there exists a large body of concepts from everyday life that are used to guide students. In this study, we explore whether such concepts from everyday life that we might believe require no explanation are actually understood in different ways by students in an introductory browser-based applications course. Our analysis focuses on an elementary interactive element: a button. Analyzing survey data from 185 students, we observe that even the simple concept of a button may be understood in a myriad of ways and that the context in which the concept is represented significantly influences beliefs of how the concept behaves. Our results indicate that students can rarely disentangle a concept from the context, and that some even believe that the text shown on a button in a graphical user interface is used to define the functionality of the button.

Original language	English
Title of host publication	Proceedings of 21st Koli Calling International Conference on Computing Education Research, Koli Calling 2021
Editors	Otto Seppälä, Andrew Petersen
Publisher	ACM
Pages	1-6
Number of pages	6
ISBN (Electronic)	9781450384889
ISBN (Print)	978-1-4503-8488-9
DOIs	https://doi.org/10.1145/3488042.3490170
Publication status	Published - 18 Nov 2021
MoE publication type	A4 Conference publication
Event	Koli Calling - International Conference on Computing Education Research - Online, Lieksa, Finland Duration: 18 Nov 2021 → 21 Nov 2021 Conference number: 21 https://www.kolicalling.fi/

Conference

Conference	Koli Calling - International Conference on Computing Education Research
Abbreviated title	Koli Calling
Country/Territory	Finland
City	Lieksa
Period	18/11/2021 → 21/11/2021
Internet address	https://www.kolicalling.fi/

Keywords

button
graphical user interface
contextualization
programming education
computer science education

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10.1145/3488042.3490170

Final Accepted ManuscriptAccepted author manuscript, 227 KB

https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3488042.3490170

Cite this

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title = "A Kingdom for a Button: Students{\textquoteright} Thoughts about Buttons",

abstract = "In learning programming and learning to construct applications with graphical user interfaces, there exists a large body of concepts from everyday life that are used to guide students. In this study, we explore whether such concepts from everyday life that we might believe require no explanation are actually understood in different ways by students in an introductory browser-based applications course. Our analysis focuses on an elementary interactive element: a button. Analyzing survey data from 185 students, we observe that even the simple concept of a button may be understood in a myriad of ways and that the context in which the concept is represented significantly influences beliefs of how the concept behaves. Our results indicate that students can rarely disentangle a concept from the context, and that some even believe that the text shown on a button in a graphical user interface is used to define the functionality of the button. ",

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author = "Aleksi Lukkarinen and Arto Hellas and Lassi Haaranen",

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booktitle = "Proceedings of 21st Koli Calling International Conference on Computing Education Research, Koli Calling 2021",

publisher = "ACM",

address = "United States",

note = "Koli Calling - International Conference on Computing Education Research, Koli Calling ; Conference date: 18-11-2021 Through 21-11-2021",

url = "https://www.kolicalling.fi/",

}

Lukkarinen, A, Hellas, A & Haaranen, L 2021, A Kingdom for a Button: Students’ Thoughts about Buttons. in O Seppälä & A Petersen (eds), Proceedings of 21st Koli Calling International Conference on Computing Education Research, Koli Calling 2021., 21, ACM, pp. 1-6, Koli Calling - International Conference on Computing Education Research, Lieksa, Finland, 18/11/2021. https://doi.org/10.1145/3488042.3490170

A Kingdom for a Button: Students’ Thoughts about Buttons. / Lukkarinen, Aleksi; Hellas, Arto ; Haaranen, Lassi.
Proceedings of 21st Koli Calling International Conference on Computing Education Research, Koli Calling 2021. ed. / Otto Seppälä; Andrew Petersen. ACM, 2021. p. 1-6 21.

Research output: Chapter in Book/Report/Conference proceeding › Conference article in proceedings › Scientific › peer-review

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AU - Hellas, Arto

AU - Haaranen, Lassi

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AB - In learning programming and learning to construct applications with graphical user interfaces, there exists a large body of concepts from everyday life that are used to guide students. In this study, we explore whether such concepts from everyday life that we might believe require no explanation are actually understood in different ways by students in an introductory browser-based applications course. Our analysis focuses on an elementary interactive element: a button. Analyzing survey data from 185 students, we observe that even the simple concept of a button may be understood in a myriad of ways and that the context in which the concept is represented significantly influences beliefs of how the concept behaves. Our results indicate that students can rarely disentangle a concept from the context, and that some even believe that the text shown on a button in a graphical user interface is used to define the functionality of the button.

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A Kingdom for a Button: Students’ Thoughts about Buttons

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