Can I read A Block-Based Testing Framework for Scratch on EtoBox?

A Block-Based Testing Framework for Scratch by Feldmeier, Patric; Fraser, Gordon; Heuer, Ute; Obermüller, Florian; Steckenbiller, Siegfried is a scholarly article available to read on EtoBox.

What is A Block-Based Testing Framework for Scratch about?

Block-based programming environments like Scratch are widely used in introductory programming courses. They facilitate learning pivotal programming concepts by eliminating syntactical errors, but logical errors that break the desired program behaviour are nevertheless possible. Finding such errors requires testing, i.e., running the program and checking its behaviour. In many programming environments, this step can be automated by providing executable tests as code; in Scratch, testing can only be done manually by invoking events through user input and observing the rendered stage. While this is arguably sufficient for learners, the lack of automated testing may be inhibitive for teachers wishing to provide feedback on their students' solutions. In order to address this issue, we introduce a new category of blocks in Scratch that enables the creation of automated tests. With these blocks, students and teachers alike can create tests and receive feedback directly within the Scratch environment using familiar block-based programming logic. To facilitate the creation and to enable batch processing sets of student solutions, we extend the Scratch user interface with an accompanying tes

Author

Feldmeier, Patric; Fraser, Gordon; Heuer, Ute; Obermüller, Florian; Steckenbiller, Siegfried

Published

2024

Language

EN