Andrea J.

As a User experience professional and professor, I have very mixed views on using Codio for my Fall 2021 Intro programming course in Python. Codio has been phenomenal providing autograded content that maintains the rigor I expect for an intro programming course with just the right amount of challenge for advanced learners and enough nuanced guidance for newbies. My issues lie with the interface itself. In general, the user interaction across pages within an assignment, within a lesson, within a course are not consistent. This is problematic because students who are new to technology, new to college, new to programming become quickly frustrated when they expect buttons to be in the same place on each page or if they're asked to run code that has an input statement but the parallel page that should display the result does not afford that action. Similarly, if they're expected to "run" some code, there is no terminal or "run" button on the page. It seems like the interface was developed but was not evaluated by a UX team or using professors at a teaching institution. There are some really good features that Codio provides but as a teaching tool in the classroom it also can create nightmares. I have several bugs that are unresolved when it comes to issuing grades through my institution's LMS. It is very hard to fix an issue, Codio created or otherwise, once students have started an assignment and that should not be the case.