CAREER: Towards Understanding and Improving Crowd-based Software Video Tutorials

软件程序员执行的最常见和最耗时的活动之一是搜索信息以帮助他们完成编程任务。随着互联网的广泛使用，程序员寻求信息的方式越来越多地转向网络资源，特别是在知识渊博的同事或良好的内部文档无法获得的情况下。在线资源中的信息对于程序员来说已经变得不可或缺，而在线编程视频教程是新手和有经验的程序员经常参考的重要资源。因此，确保程序员能够有效地搜索、访问、获取、理解和使用这些信息，并开发促进这些操作的工具和技术是至关重要的。要做到这一点，首先必须找到几个重要问题的答案。程序员如何使用视频教程来支持他们的任务？他们认为哪些信息有用？改进了哪些任务？如何通过利用视频教程更好地支持程序员的信息需求？这个项目的目标是解决现有的差距，并改进关于基于人群的编程视频教程的主题覆盖率、使用和质量的知识体系。该项目将开发技术，以改善程序员使用和创建视频教程的方式。该项目的成果将改变程序员和计算机科学专业学生从视频教程中获取知识的方式。目标是在软件工程环境和课堂上支持更好的学习和教学。这可以节省时间和精力，进而降低软件成本。该项目还将为中学生组织一个临时编程夏令营，旨在扩大对计算机科学领域的参与。该项目将重点放在公开提供的与流行编程语言有关的视频教程上。这些目标将通过应用新的技术和工具来实现，这些技术和工具有助于提取正确的源代码、音频抄本和节目视频教程的主题报道。将开发一种分类法来表征高质量节目视频教程的属性。评估将通过访谈、用户研究和调查进行。将从用户数据和从视频教程中自动挖掘的数据合成基于人群的节目视频教程的质量的新模型。这项研究将涉及信息检索、程序理解和自然语言处理技术的应用。这一奖项反映了NSF的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的智力优势和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

One of the most common and time-consuming activities performed by software programmers is searching for information to help them with their programming tasks. With the widespread use of the internet, programmers' information seeking is shifting more and more towards web resources, especially when knowledgeable colleagues or good internal documentation are not available. Information found in online resources has become indispensable for programmers, and online programming video tutorials are an important resource frequently consulted by both novice and experienced programmers. Therefore, it is of paramount importance to ensure that programmers can search, access, acquire, understand, and use this information efficiently and to develop tools and techniques that facilitate these actions. To achieve this one must first find answers to a few important questions. How do programmers use video tutorials to support their tasks? What information do they find useful? What tasks are improved? How one can better support programmers' information needs through leveraging video tutorials? The goal of this project is to address existing gaps and improve the body of knowledge about the topic coverage, usage, and quality of crowd-based programming video tutorials. The project will develop techniques to improve the way video tutorials are used and created by programmers. The outcomes of this project will transform the way programmers and computer science students acquire knowledge from video tutorials. The goal is to support better learning and instruction in software engineering settings and in the classroom. This can lead to time and effort savings that in turn can result in decreased software costs. The project will also organize a Scratch summer coding camp for middle schoolers which aims to broaden participation in the field of Computer Science. The project will focus in scope on publicly available video tutorials related to popular programming languages. The goals will be achieved through the application of novel techniques and tools that facilitate the extraction of correct source code, audio transcripts, and the topic coverage of programming video tutorials. A taxonomy will be developed to characterize the properties of quality programming video tutorials. Evaluation will be done using interviews, user studies, and surveys. A novel model of the quality of crowd-based programming video tutorials will be synthesized from user data and data automatically mined from video tutorials. The research will involve the application of techniques for information retrieval, program comprehension, and natural language processing.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.