Recommendations for Improving End-User Programming Education: A Case Study with Undergraduate Chemistry Students.

Area of Science:

• Computer Science Education
• Computational Chemistry

Background:

• Programming is increasingly integrated into diverse university curricula.
• Students from non-computing disciplines often encounter significant challenges when learning to program.

Purpose of the Study:

• To investigate the specific programming challenges faced by undergraduate chemistry and biochemistry students.
• To identify factors contributing to lower confidence and reduced use of programming for domain-specific problems.

Main Methods:

• A case study was conducted with undergraduate chemistry/biochemistry students in a physical chemistry course sequence.
• Thematic content analysis was applied to data from student surveys and think-aloud sessions.

Main Results:

• Students demonstrated difficulty transferring programming knowledge to novel representations and problems.
• A lack of effective programming problem-solving strategies was observed.
• These challenges negatively impacted students' confidence in their programming abilities.

Conclusions:

• Explicit instruction in programming abstraction, decomposition, and metacognitive awareness is recommended for end-user programming contexts.
• Developing these skills can enhance students' confidence and encourage the application of computing to scientific problems.