Open source widget for parson's puzzles

Authors:
Petri Ihantola;Ville Karavirta
Affiliations:
Aalto University, Espoo, Finland;Aalto University, Espoo, Finland
Venue:
Proceedings of the fifteenth annual conference on Innovation and technology in computer science education
Year:
2010

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Abstract

We introduce js-parsons - MIT licensed JavaScript widget to embed Parson's puzzles to any HTML. The novelty of js-parsons is the 2-dimensional drag-and-drop of the code lines. Firstly, the code lines in the solution need to be in correct order as in the existing solutions. Secondly, since our exercises present Python, code blocks are created by indenting the code lines. This is done by drag-and-dropping the lines in horizontal direction. In addition, js-parsons can record how puzzles are solved and send the logs to a server. We hope to use the logging feature to understand how students solve puzzles and how puzzles should be designed to be more effective.