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

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.