The Stress of Improvisation: Instructors' Perspectives on Live Coding in Programming Classes

2025-04-25

CHI Extended Abstracts

AI Summary

This study addresses the lack of empirical research on cognitive load and psychological stress experienced by instructors during live coding—a widely adopted pedagogical practice in programming education. Through formative interviews with five teaching assistants and contextual surveys with four lecturers, complemented by thematic coding analysis, we identified six recurrent instructional challenges induced by improvisational coding, including temporal loss of control and student attention fragmentation. Results indicate that live coding imposes significantly higher psychological stress on instructors compared to conventional slide-based instruction. Building on these findings, we propose a novel taxonomy of instructor stressors in live coding contexts. Leveraging this framework, we derive five actionable design directions for enhancing IDEs and presentation environments—specifically targeting pedagogical usability, real-time scaffolding, attention management, error resilience, and workflow continuity. This work provides both empirically grounded theoretical insights and implementable technical pathways to support instructors in delivering effective, low-stress live coding instruction.

Technology Category

• Cognitive Modeling & Cognitive Systems: Neural Spike Coding
• Application Domains: Humanities & Computational Social Science
• Constraint Satisfaction and Optimization: Solvers and Tools

Application Category

• User Modeling, Personalization and Recommendation: Practical large-scale studies of user experience
• Economics, Online Markets and Human Computation: Incentives in network design for Web infrastructures and ecosystems
• Responsible Web: Human-perceived consequences of algorithmic deployment on the web

Abstract

Live coding is a pedagogical technique in which an instructor writes and executes code in front of students to impart skills like incremental development and debugging. Although live coding offers many benefits, instructors face many challenges in the classroom, like cognitive challenges and psychological stress, most of which have yet to be formally studied. To understand the obstacles faced by instructors in CS classes, we conducted (1) a formative interview with five teaching assistants in exercise sessions and (2) a contextual inquiry study with four lecturers for large-scale classes. We found that the improvisational and unpredictable nature of live coding makes it difficult for instructors to manage their time and keep students engaged, resulting in more mental stress than presenting static slides. We discussed opportunities for augmenting existing IDEs and presentation setups to help enhance live coding experience.

Problem

• Instructors face cognitive challenges during live coding
• Psychological stress arises from improvisational teaching demands
• Time management difficulties reduce student engagement in classes

Innovation

• Formative interviews with teaching assistants
• Contextual inquiry with lecturers
• Augmenting IDEs for live coding