Redesigning Creative Coding Education for Beginner Programmers

Abstract

The intent for this project was to improve the learning experience of first-time programmers by designing a learner-centered online resource for creative coding (applied programming in the arts) in p5.js. While there are established introductory texts for computer science, the equivalent texts for creative coding are not as well defined. Our team hypothesized that beginner programmers, especially those from groups what are traditionally underrepresented in computing fields, would benefit from an open educational resource that takes a learner-centric, project-forward approach to teaching computing concepts through creative coding languages. Overall, we would summarize our methodology as exploratory, interdisciplinary design research.