An Event Listener or an Event Handler? Students Explain Event-drivenness in JavaScript

Aleksi Lukkarinen*, Teemu Lehtinen, Lassi Haaranen, Lauri Malmi

*Corresponding author for this work

Research output: Chapter in Book/Report/Conference proceedingConference article in proceedingsScientificpeer-review

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Abstract

When students in programming courses are taught event-driven programming (EDP) for the first time, they face new terminology and concepts that they should internalize. Moreover, they learn a fully new approach for reasoning about program logic and execution order. However, there is a lack of research in students’ understanding of these concepts. In this paper, we describe a study, in which we asked web development students to explain their conception of EDP: what are the main concepts involved and how they interact. Moreover, we asked them to explain the execution of a short piece of JavaScript code that focuses on basic usage of events and event listeners. The answers, which we requested as concept maps and text, were analyzed using inductive content analysis. Our results clearly demonstrate shortcomings in the students’ learning and illustrate various misunderstandings that they may have regarding EDP. Based on the findings, we give suggestions for improving the teaching of EDP.
Original languageEnglish
Title of host publicationProceedings of 21st Koli Calling International Conference on Computing Education Research, Koli Calling 2021
EditorsOtto Seppälä, Andrew Petersen
PublisherACM
Pages1-10
Number of pages10
ISBN (Electronic)9781450384889
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 17 Nov 2021
MoE publication typeA4 Conference publication
EventKoli Calling - International Conference on Computing Education Research - Online, Lieksa, Finland
Duration: 18 Nov 202121 Nov 2021
Conference number: 21
https://www.kolicalling.fi/

Conference

ConferenceKoli Calling - International Conference on Computing Education Research
Abbreviated titleKoli Calling
Country/TerritoryFinland
CityLieksa
Period18/11/202121/11/2021
Internet address

Keywords

  • event-oriented
  • event-based
  • JavaScript
  • concept map
  • computer science education
  • programming education

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