Extension of a Study on Parsons' Problems Reveals Implications for SEE&T

“The Code Mangler: Evaluating Coding Ability Without Writing Any Code” [1] introduced a hypothetical bad actor into an established, but still relatively new, problem type - the Parsons' Problem [2]. When I replicated and extended the study, similar results to the original were observed: students found that rearranging lines of correct code that were in jumbled order was as difficult and as good at assessing their abilities as writing code from scratch [3]. Not only is this finding helpful in providing an accurate assessment tool with significantly reduced effort required to grade, it presents an interesting possibility for future software engineers: the ability to practice and gain confidence in working with unfamiliar code, a skill which may translate to industry.