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Learning on the job: characterizing the programming knowledge and learning strategies of web designers

Published:10 April 2010Publication History

ABSTRACT

This paper reports on a study of professional web designers and developers. We provide a detailed characterization of their knowledge of fundamental programming concepts elicited through card sorting. Additionally, we present qualitative findings regarding their motivation to learn new concepts and the learning strategies they employ. We find a high level of recognition of basic concepts, but we identify a number of concepts that they do not fully understand, consider difficult to learn, and use infrequently. We also note that their learning process is motivated by work projects and often follows a pattern of trial and error. We conclude with implications for end-user programming researchers.

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          cover image ACM Conferences
          CHI '10: Proceedings of the SIGCHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems
          April 2010
          2690 pages
          ISBN:9781605589299
          DOI:10.1145/1753326

          Copyright © 2010 ACM

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          Publication History

          • Published: 10 April 2010

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