PlanIT! A New Integrated Tool to Help Novices Design for Open-ended Projects

Project-based learning can encourage and motivate students to learn through exploring their own interests, but introduces special challenges for novice programmers. Recent research has shown that novice students perceive themselves to be "bad at programming, especially when they do not know how to start writing a program, or need to create a plan before getting started. In this paper, we present PlanIT, a guided planning tool integrated with the Snap! programming environment designed to help novices plan and program their open-ended projects. Within PlanIT, students can add a description for their project, use a to do list to help break down the steps of implementation, plan important elements of their program including actors, variables, and events, and view related example projects. We report findings from a pilot study of high school students using PlanIT, showing that students who used the tool learned to make more specific and actionable plans. Results from student interviews show they appreciate the guidance that PlanIT provides, as well as the affordances it offers to more quickly create program elements.