Combining Parson's Problems with Program Visualization in CS1 Context

Parson's problems, in which students solve programming assignments by putting code fragments in the correct order, can be an easy way to start the assignments as there is no need to write code or struggle with the syntax. In this paper, we report results from a preliminary experiment in which we combined two existing libraries, js-parsons and Jsvee. We extended the original feedback of js-parsons with program visualizations to show for the students how their solution was executed and why it possibly did not work as expected. We analyzed the usage of the visualizations, and the results show that over half of the students viewed them if they were available. Novices who used the visualizations tend to need more submissions than the other novices, which may imply the weaker students find visualizations more useful. However, more research is needed to analyze the learning effects.