Article

Tinkering and gender in end-user programmers' debugging

Authors:

Laura Beckwith,

Cory Kissinger,

Margaret Burnett,

Susan Wiedenbeck,

Joseph Lawrance,

Alan Blackwell,

Curtis CookAuthors Info & Claims

CHI '06: Proceedings of the SIGCHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems

Pages 231 - 240

https://doi.org/10.1145/1124772.1124808

Published: 22 April 2006 Publication History

Abstract

Earlier research on gender effects with software features intended to help problem-solvers in end-user debugging environments has shown that females are less likely to use unfamiliar software features. This poses a serious problem because these features may be key to helping them with debugging problems. Contrasting this with research documenting males' inclination for tinkering in unfamiliar environments, the question arises as to whether encouraging tinkering with new features would help females overcome the factors, such as low self-efficacy, that led to the earlier results. In this paper, we present an experiment with males and females in an end-user debugging setting, and investigate how tinkering behavior impacts several measures of their debugging success. Our results show that the factors of tinkering, reflection, and self-efficacy, can combine in multiple ways to impact debugging effectiveness differently for males than for females.

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Cited By

Newendorp AGilbert S(2024)Gender-Related Preferences for Learning by Tinkering: Updated Research is NeededProceedings of the Human Factors and Ergonomics Society Annual Meeting10.1177/10711813241272118Online publication date: 24-Oct-2024
https://doi.org/10.1177/10711813241272118
Rode JFeng YZhang HRosman RBastaman AKing JSamson MDong XWalker AHorton MRead JOliver MElmimouni H(2024)Playful Telepresence Robots with School ChildrenProceedings of the 13th Nordic Conference on Human-Computer Interaction10.1145/3679318.3685367(1-16)Online publication date: 13-Oct-2024
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3679318.3685367
Choudhuri RLiu DSteinmacher IGerosa MSarma ARoychoudhury APaiva AAbreu RStorey M(2024)How Far Are We? The Triumphs and Trials of Generative AI in Learning Software EngineeringProceedings of the IEEE/ACM 46th International Conference on Software Engineering10.1145/3597503.3639201(1-13)Online publication date: 20-May-2024
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3597503.3639201
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Index Terms

Tinkering and gender in end-user programmers' debugging
1. Human-centered computing
  1. Human computer interaction (HCI)
2. Software and its engineering
  1. Software creation and management
    1. Software verification and validation
      1. Software defect analysis
        Software testing and debugging

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Published In

cover image ACM Conferences

CHI '06: Proceedings of the SIGCHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems

April 2006

1353 pages

ISBN:1595933727

DOI:10.1145/1124772

Editors:
Rebecca Grinter
Georgia Institute of Technology, USA
,
Thomas Rodden
University of Nottingham, UK
,
Paul Aoki
Intel, USA
,
Ed Cutrell
Microsoft, USA
,
Robin Jeffries
Google, USA
,
Gary Olson
University of Michigan, USA

Copyright © 2006 ACM.

Permission to make digital or hard copies of all or part of this work for personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. Copyrights for components of this work owned by others than ACM must be honored. Abstracting with credit is permitted. To copy otherwise, or republish, to post on servers or to redistribute to lists, requires prior specific permission and/or a fee. Request permissions from [email protected]

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Published: 22 April 2006

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Cited By

Newendorp AGilbert S(2024)Gender-Related Preferences for Learning by Tinkering: Updated Research is NeededProceedings of the Human Factors and Ergonomics Society Annual Meeting10.1177/10711813241272118Online publication date: 24-Oct-2024
https://doi.org/10.1177/10711813241272118
Rode JFeng YZhang HRosman RBastaman AKing JSamson MDong XWalker AHorton MRead JOliver MElmimouni H(2024)Playful Telepresence Robots with School ChildrenProceedings of the 13th Nordic Conference on Human-Computer Interaction10.1145/3679318.3685367(1-16)Online publication date: 13-Oct-2024
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3679318.3685367
Choudhuri RLiu DSteinmacher IGerosa MSarma ARoychoudhury APaiva AAbreu RStorey M(2024)How Far Are We? The Triumphs and Trials of Generative AI in Learning Software EngineeringProceedings of the IEEE/ACM 46th International Conference on Software Engineering10.1145/3597503.3639201(1-13)Online publication date: 20-May-2024
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3597503.3639201
Nam DMacvean AHellendoorn VVasilescu BMyers BRoychoudhury APaiva AAbreu RStorey M(2024)Using an LLM to Help With Code UnderstandingProceedings of the IEEE/ACM 46th International Conference on Software Engineering10.1145/3597503.3639187(1-13)Online publication date: 20-May-2024
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3597503.3639187
Xia Q(2024)Supporting Spreadsheet Users in Knowledge Sharing2024 IEEE Symposium on Visual Languages and Human-Centric Computing (VL/HCC)10.1109/VL/HCC60511.2024.00059(386-388)Online publication date: 2-Sep-2024
https://doi.org/10.1109/VL/HCC60511.2024.00059
Santos I(2024)Empowering Diversity: Leveraging Cognitive Styles to Support Newcomers in Open Source Projects2024 IEEE Symposium on Visual Languages and Human-Centric Computing (VL/HCC)10.1109/VL/HCC60511.2024.00056(380-381)Online publication date: 2-Sep-2024
https://doi.org/10.1109/VL/HCC60511.2024.00056
Kerr KHolmes R(2024)Age-Inclusive Integrated Development Environments for End-Users2024 IEEE Symposium on Visual Languages and Human-Centric Computing (VL/HCC)10.1109/VL/HCC60511.2024.00039(289-299)Online publication date: 2-Sep-2024
https://doi.org/10.1109/VL/HCC60511.2024.00039
Xia QSarkar ABrumby DCox A(2024)The Paradox of Spreadsheet Self-Efficacy: Social Incentives for Informal Knowledge Sharing in End-User Programming2024 IEEE Symposium on Visual Languages and Human-Centric Computing (VL/HCC)10.1109/VL/HCC60511.2024.00019(81-88)Online publication date: 2-Sep-2024
https://doi.org/10.1109/VL/HCC60511.2024.00019
Blanco ACórdova ABergel AAlcocer J(2024)Asking and Answering Questions During Memory ProfilingIEEE Transactions on Software Engineering10.1109/TSE.2024.337712750:5(1096-1117)Online publication date: 13-Mar-2024
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Hadad R(2024)The use of makerspaces for the development of computational thinking skills and dispositions: pedagogical practices facilitators useComputer Science Education10.1080/08993408.2024.2374679(1-40)Online publication date: 12-Jul-2024
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