Student Adoption and Perceptions of a Web Integrated Development Environment: An Experience Report

Students often spend a considerable amount of time and effort installing and configuring programming tools and environments. This can frustrate, and distract them from more important learning objectives, particularly in introductory programming courses. A web-based integrated development environment can serve as a low-threshold, ready-to-use programming environment, and reduce the time and effort needed to start practicing programming. In this paper, we report our experience of developing and deploying a web-based integrated development environment (web IDE) as an optional tool at a large public university that has been in use for over several years in various programming courses. We conducted a survey to understand students' perceptions toward the web IDE and usage of its features. Using the data from the survey, we explored potential correlations between student demographic and behavioral traits in adoption of the web IDE. The results of the survey suggest that around half of the students use the IDE often or very often. We also discovered that the likelihood of adoption of the IDE decreases as students to move to upper classes. In this paper, we also describe broader lessons for educators and researchers.