PyGuru: A Programming Environment to Facilitate Measurement of Cognitive Engagement

Abstract

There is a vital link between students' engagement and their performance. Despite this, a dearth of studies exploring student engagement (especially cognitive) in computer programming, where high failure rates are a norm. Interestingly, online environments capture fine-grained interactions; this data has the potential to detect students' cognitive engagement. The contribution of this paper is two-fold. Firstly, it introduces an online learning environment to learn and practice python programming called PyGuru and the data logged in the system. Secondly, we provide a preliminary analysis of students' interaction with the system to reveal their level of cognitive engagement in different system components. The results of this study conducted for two weeks and 21 students demonstrate that students perform more actions that correspond to passive engagement than other levels of engagement.