Code Puzzle: "Parsons puzzles" generator and manager | Hacker News Reader

Code Puzzle: "Parsons puzzles" generator and manager

codepuzzle.io

25 pointslaurentabbal13 comments

Nice generator! Parsons Puzzles are a well researched way of scaffolded learning in the CS community.

Last year when I was teaching UC Berkeley CS61A, we tried out a variant called Faded Parsons Puzzles, where the draggable code lines also have blanks and get verified via Python doctests. I made a browser-based runner for that style, for anyone who wants to easily create new Faded Parsons Puzzles.

See demo here: https://pamelafox.github.io/faded-parsons-static/index.html More background here: http://blog.pamelafox.org/2022/08/a-browser-based-runner-for...

We'll be presenting a poster about our experiment with FPPs at this year's SIGCSE.

Interesting. Code Puzzle also offers the possibility to add blanks (and drop down menus), but no doctests. Maybe a new feature for the next version.

Oh nice, I didn't realize you had that capability. It looks like you're using js-parsons, which is also what we branched off. I ended up deleting the line-based grader logic in our js-parsons fork, since we only need doctest-based grading and I wanted to clean up the code, but in theory, both kinds of graders can co-exist.

I will add the doctests soon. And other languages will be supported.

The "Options" documentation is still in French when I click "Create a Puzzle", that's why I didn't realize one could add blanks/menus.

It's now in english

From your blog:

> If you teach a different language besides Python, it may be possible for you to get it working if there's a way to run that language in the browser.

JavaScript comes to mind as an obvious choice. In my experience, something like this would be priceless when teaching!

I think you should be able to use OP's site or the js-parsons library to make JS puzzles, if you're okay with "line-based feedback". To use Faded Parsons with JavaScript and test-based feedback, you'd need to decide the format of the tests, since JS doesn't have a built-in doctest module like Python. Once you did that, it should be straightforward enough to use it for JavaScript. Happy to help if you end up branching off my repo.

Woah — I spent a couple of weeks last year doing a quantitative comparison of the outcomes of students using FPPs vs ones using traditional PPs. And I’m pretty sure I emailed someone at Berkeley (last name Weinman, I think?) asking some questions about their paper on FPPs. The Internet really is a small place!

This seems to use the js-parsons library which has not been updated in years: https://github.com/js-parsons/js-parsons

Can anyone recommend an alternative, especially for puzzles about JavaScript?

For Python, this seems relevant: https://futurecoder.io/

Their Parsons implementation seems to be one-dimensional though (the student does not have to form the correct blocks by indentation): https://github.com/alexmojaki/futurecoder/blob/d6cb1a7bf8974...

I can see the site is in both English and French, but I get the puzzles only in French.

Examples are with code in french. English version is coming.

A more challenging code puzzle game: https://BUGFIX-66.com

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