Investigating Debugging Processes: A Scoping Review

Debugging is a necessity in programming, in both professional and educational contexts. For novices, however, debugging is often a significant challenge. Understanding what students actually do when debugging is key to addressing difficulties and developing targeted interventions. As a result, several studies investigated the students’ debugging process. Nevertheless, it is unknown which aspects have been analyzed so far and which gaps still exist. To clarify the state of research, we conducted a scoping review and identified 36 papers that analyze students’ debugging processes. Our review shows that the majority of the studies focused on selected parts of the process, mainly by analyzing screen recordings or videos from the classroom using qualitative, inductive methods. Moreover, most of the papers either assessed the students’ debugging strategies or their performance. As a result, there is a lack of deductive analysis approaches focusing on investigating the whole debugging process. Consequently, this review provides a starting point for future analyses of debugging processes.     «

Debugging is a necessity in programming, in both professional and educational contexts. For novices, however, debugging is often a significant challenge. Understanding what students actually do when debugging is key to addressing difficulties and developing targeted interventions. As a result, several studies investigated the students’ debugging process. Nevertheless, it is unknown which aspects have been analyzed so far and which gaps still exist. To clarify the state of research, we conducted...     »