Roles of variables as seen by CS educators

Roles can be assigned to occurrences of variables in programs according to a small number of patterns of use that are both language- and algorithm-independent. Preliminary studies on explicitly teaching roles of variables to novice students have shown that roles are an excellent pedagogical tool for clarifying the structure and meaning of programs. This paper describes the results of an investigation designed to test the understandability and acceptability of the role concept and of the individual roles as seen by computer science educators. The investigation consisted of a short tutorial on roles, a brief training session on assigning roles to variables, a test evaluating the subjects' ability to assign roles, and a set of open questions concerning their opinions of roles. Roles were identified with 85 accuracy, and in typical uses of variables with 93 accuracy.