Time-constrained Code Recall Tasks for Monitoring the Development of Programming Plans

Programmers rely on the recognition and utilization of reoccurring code sequences to understand and create code. Knowledge of these sequences - programming plans - has been shown to be a factor that differentiates novice programmers from experts. Although the information on the development of programming plans would be beneficial to both teachers and students, explicitly following their development over a longer time period is scarce. In this article, we describe an easy-to-apply methodology for monitoring the development of programming plans. The development of programming plans is evaluated with time-constrained code recall tasks, where students are shown snippets of code for a short period of time, after which they write the snippets they saw. To determine the existence of programming plans, the short duration is designed so that reading the shown code is not feasible in the given time period. We demonstrate the methodology through an experiment in which we studied the development of programming plans in students in a beginner web programming course.