title: "Mismatch of Expectations: How Modern Learning Resources Fail Conversational Programmers"
authors: April Y. Wang, Ryan Mitts, Philip J. Guo, Parmit K. Chilana
venue: ACM Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI)
year: 2018
footer: "<font color=\"#AA0000\">Honorable Mention Paper</font>"
links:
- <a href="conversational-programmer-papers.htm">Blog post</a>

tweet: Learning resources are too focused on producing new code, not on high-level conversational concepts

abstract: >
  Conversational programmers represent a class of learners who are not
  required to write any code, yet try to learn programming to improve
  their participation in technical conversations. We carried out
  interviews with 23 conversational programmers to better understand the
  challenges they face in technical conversations, what resources they
  choose to learn programming, how they perceive the learning process,
  and to what extent learning programming actually helps them. Among our
  key findings, we found that conversational programmers often did not
  know where to even begin the learning process and ended up using
  formal and informal learning resources that focus largely on
  programming syntax and logic. However, since the end goal of
  conversational programmers was not to build artifacts, modern learning
  resources usually failed these learners in their pursuits of improving
  their technical conversations. Our findings point to design
  opportunities in HCI to invent learner-centered approaches that
  address the needs of conversational programmers and help them
  establish common ground in technical conversations.

bibtex: >
  @inproceedings{WangCHI2018,
   author = {Wang, April Y. and Mitts, Ryan and Guo, Philip J. and Chilana, Parmit K.},
   title = {Mismatch of Expectations: How Modern Learning Resources Fail Conversational Programmers},
   booktitle = {Proceedings of the 2018 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems},
   series = {CHI '18},
   year = {2018},
   isbn = {978-1-4503-5620-6},
   location = {Montreal QC, Canada},
   pages = {511:1--511:13},
   articleno = {511},
   numpages = {13},
   url = {http://doi.acm.org/10.1145/3173574.3174085},
   doi = {10.1145/3173574.3174085},
   acmid = {3174085},
   publisher = {ACM},
   address = {New York, NY, USA},
   keywords = {conversational programmers, learner-centered design, programming literacy, technical conversations},
  }