Introducing Students to Computer Science:

Using Python to Build a Basic Quiz Game

Alex Diosdado
Spring Quarter, June 2022
Abstract:
This outreach program activity was designed to increase interest in the field of Computer
Science within students in middle and high school. It focuses on some of the basic concepts of
programming, like Strings, Integers and printing to the screen as it was designed to be an
introduction for those students who had little to no previous programming history. This activity
was tested with a smaller group of high school Algebra 1 students, most of whom did not have
any prior programming knowledge. It ultimately fulfilled its goal as a survey that was conducted
at the end of the activity found that some of the students who had no prior CS history felt they
were more interested in taking classes in the Computer Science field.

Introduction:
Over time, technology has become further and further entrenched in people's daily lives.
As such it is important that we understand how and why it works, no different from how we
should learn about our world through topics in the sciences such as Biology, Chemistry and
Physics. However, Computer Science is not seen as an important subject to high schools which
leads to many students who go through their early academic careers without access to any kind
of Computer education. According to CSforCA, an organization that advocates for high quality
computer science education for California students, only 39% of high schools in the state of
California actually offer computer science classes for their students and ⅔ of all high schools in
California do not offer any classes for computer science. Ultimately, only 3% of California’s 1.3
million high school students took a computer science class and only 1% of them took the APCS
exam. As the tech industry continues to expand, there is a continued need for programmers and
computer scientists to fill positions, but it is becoming clearer that the next generation of students
are not being given the proper opportunity to learn the skills necessary for these kinds of careers
before they start their university classes. Despite California being the largest economic provider
out of all 50 states in the US and multiple major tech companies calling the state home, it lags far
behind other states in terms of high school student participation. According to The California
Computer Science Access Report, California lags behind the national average in the percentage
of high schools that offer at least one CS course (~47%) and lag behind 34 other states.
California’s 42% of schools offering CS courses is almost doubled by states like Maryland and
Arkansas, who respectively have 83% and 78% of their high schools offering CS courses. As it
stands, California not only needs more students interested in the Computer Science field, which
this activity aims to address, but also needs more schools to offer CS courses to students.
Students simply can’t take classes that just don’t exist.

Related Work:

Some of the main research for this project was teaching strategies and information of
student learning. According to Daniel Willingham’s book Why Don’t Students Like School, a
strategy that helps students remember information easier is “chunking”. Essentially, students
have an easier time retaining information when the information is broken down into easier to
digest segments rather than trying to memorize all the info at once. Another aspect of a students
education to consider is that a students ability to critical think can be improved with background
knowledge. This makes sense as can be seen when a student is taking an exam, a question asks
about providing an algorithm that solves a given task. The student will have a much easier time
solving this question with some background knowledge, maybe they’ve seen similar problems in
class previously and having previously seen a similar problem they can have an easier time using
critical thinking skills to develop a solution.

As this activity is teaching programming to people who have no prior experience, it

would be important to understand some of the issues that may arise in the thought process of
these students. The Buggy Path to The Development of Programming Expertise, an article Roy
D. Pea refers to three of these misconceptions as “bugs”. The first known as the “parallelism
bug” refers to a misconception that the computer can compute multiple lines at once. Another
one of these bugs, the “intentionality bug”, references when a student wrongly infers the function
of a program from the instructions. The final bug, known as the “egocentrism bug”, is seen when
a student assumes the computer knows more about what it should do than it actually does, also
assuming the computer can infer missing code like a human.

The National Center for Women & Technology (NCWIT) is an organization that focuses
on correcting underrepresented communities in computing. NCWIT offers various programs that
help students of all age groups to experience computing and is a very good inspiration for this
project. NCWIT also offers a page that reviews some of the “best practices for computer
outreach programs.” One of the items listed is to make the outreach program matter. One way to
do this is by using meaningful content. As this is an introduction for students with little to no
programming experience, it was determined that some of the most important concepts were some
of the very basic building blocks of Python including strings, integers, print and input. These
concepts will be important if they decide to continue their CS education and it would be very
beneficial for them to see these concepts now. NCWIT also suggests incorporating student
choice, as “nothing works better than letting students choose what they want to pursue.” The
activity allows students to come up with their own questions on any kind of trivia they like
(within reason), as it was felt that it would give students more freedom while completing the
activity. Another main topic this page discusses is to “Build student confidence and professional
identity.” One way to do this is by offering student-centered assessment, allowing the students to
examine their own learning. This was addressed in the activity by allowing time for the students
to share their quiz questions with their neighbors and allow them to answer each other's quizzes.

Methodology:

Initial Concept & MADLib Game:

To help increase a students exposure to the field of computer science, the idea was
to create an outreach activity that introduces some basic programming concepts to
students that have had little to no prior programming experience. Examining California’s
K-12 Standards for CS showed that students in seventh and eighth grades (the main target
demographic of this activity) should be able to create “clearly named variables that store
data, and perform operations on their contents.” Some of the main intended learning
objectives for this activity would be for students to be able to define strings and integers
which may be foreign concepts to them. The students should also be able to understand
what variables are and some operations that can be done on them. Following the activity,
students should also understand how to call functions like “print” and “input”. To address
the main standard and some of the learning objectives, the first iteration of the activity
was a Mad-Lib program as it was felt that variables could be used to store user answers to
mimic the blanks in a Mad-Lib where someone writes their answers. Students would also
need to print questions to the screen and prompt for user input that they would then use
later in the program to print the whole sentence with the user’s input included. To address
these concepts a lesson plan to teach students using step by step instructions was
developed. The lesson plan is structured as such:
1. Students are first introduced to the concepts of strings and integers, as
these are very important and most of the activity will build on these
concepts.
2. Then students are introduced to the syntax of the print function and are
asked to practice implementing this function on their own.
3. Students are then given an explanation and some examples of variables in
python and asked to save a message in a variable and print the contents of
the variable.
4. There is a brief example of some basic string concatenation, as that is
necessary for students to know when replicating the blanks found in a
MadLib.
5. Students are then shown how the input function works and asked to input
their name, save it to a variable and print it in a sentence using string
concatenation.
The concept of chunking was used in the development of the plan, as students were given
smaller bits of information at a time and then asked to practice them before moving on to
new material. At the end of the activity worksheet students would be asked to put all of
their knowledge together to create this larger MadLib program. The instructions for the
MadLib program ask students to prompt user input using descriptors such as “noun”,
“verb”, “adjective”, “adverb”, etc. They would then print their story line by line using the
print command and would use the basic implementation of string concatenation to
inter-splice the input words in the middle of their output strings.

Initial Test:
This “Mad Lib” program activity was tested with two junior high students who
volunteered to work through the activity on a Saturday morning. The two students had
some minor experience with programming prior, but for the most part were learning these
concepts for the first time. One problem that was encountered was that the students had
trouble running code in PythonTutor as a student could not rerun their program until a
change was made to the code meaning that the students would have to type a character
and then immediately delete it in order to register a “change” so their program could
rerun. Another issue was that the pace was slightly too fast for them, as they had some
trouble keeping up with the pace of the instruction and would ask for quick clarifications
if they didn’t quite catch what was just said.

Alterations and Second Test:

Following the initial test run, a different activity was designed using the MadLib
activity as a “skeleton” and based on some of the feedback received. The new concept for
the activity was a “quiz” game that was designed to teach similar concepts to the “Mad
Lib” such as strings, variables, printing and input. The quiz added some new concepts
that weren’t initially covered such as conditionals and booleans and while integers were
discussed students did not have to use them in the original MadLib program. For the new
concepts the worksheet includes brand new sections that:
1. Introduces students to the concept of boolean and what “True” and “False” mean
in the context of programming in Python.
2. Teaches students the if-else block and how it should be set up, leaves the
conditional statement blank to be filled in later.
3. Gives an example of a conditional using the sign “==” and how the block will run
if the statement is either true or false. Emphasizes how “=” and “==” are different,
“=” is for assignment, while “==” is for conditionals
4. Gives students starter code to create one generic question so that students have a
basis when they implement their own questions later.

To avoid any similar IDE issues in any future run throughs, the main IDE was
changed to PythonTutor’s Code Visualization Tool and not its Live Programming Tool.
The code visualization tool features clearly labeled buttons that show students where they
should click to run their code and after running the code offers an “edit this code” button
that takes students directly back to the edit screen. This also means that students no
 longer have to type something just to immediately delete it, so that the IDE will rerun
their program, simplifying this process for the students. For the second test-run with the
same two middle school students, the pace of the activity was slowed down in an effort to
help them digest the new information easier. One thing that was done in this test was
asking them more questions like: “Did you understand that?” or “Do you have any
questions?” at regular intervals in an effort to ensure that they were able to follow along
with the instruction.

Intervention:
The activity was tested in an Algebra 1 class at Gabrielino High School in San Gabriel,
California. A survey was conducted to gather some background information of the students
including their grade level and experience level with computer programming. About 25 students
attended, comprising 22 freshmen, approximately 90% of the class, with the rest of the class
made up of sophomores. Of the students that participated, 16 of them (~64%) said that they had
no previous computer programming experience of any kind, eight students responded that they
had some basic programming knowledge and one person said they had done a lot of
programming work on their own in the past. As most of the class has no previous experience,
this was the perfect demographic of students for this activity.

The activity was completed during a 50 minute class period and that may have impacted
the overall pace of the activity as some students expressed that they had some trouble following
along with the instruction. Although a small number of students did not appear engaged in
following the activity, most were active in following the instruction and working on each section
of the activity. When students were released to do the final section on their own, most students
quietly worked on it. It was emphasized earlier in the period that students should ask questions if
they did not understand certain aspects of the activity, especially since it was most of the classes
first time working with programming. Based on some of the questions asked it would seem that
students had some trouble understanding how variables work in python, as students were
confused why their user input answers were overwritten when using the same variable multiple
times. This was interesting, as it was a clear example of the egocentrism bug discussed by Pea
from my research as the students felt that the computer could understand that they were trying to
save each of the answers.

Following the activity, the survey asked the students some questions about their feelings about
future endeavors in the computer science field. When asked if they would consider taking any
computer science classes, twelve students said that they had some interest in that now, while
three said that they were strongly considering taking classes. Ten of the students said that they
would now at least consider getting a degree in computer science and four said they would
strongly consider getting their degree in CS. Following the completion of the activity, the teacher
said that one of the female participants told him that she had no previous programming
experience and that she had a lot of fun participating in the activity and really wanted to do more
programming in the future. This one comment shows that the activity achieved its goal for at
least one person.

In the Spring Quarter, there was an opportunity to make improvements to this activity and
present it in a workshop through Cal Poly’s Kennedy Library. In preparation for this workshop
presentation, some changes were made to the worksheet document based on some of the
feedback given by the high school students. It was noticed that some students had a more
difficult time understanding that when a variable is set equal to a value at two points, only the
second value is kept. To address this a short concept check section was added that helps students
to visualize this concept. Some students also expressed that they had a harder time following the
instruction because of the large blocks of text on the worksheet. So these larger blocks were
condensed down and was changed to a bullet point format in an effort to make it more readable
for the students.

The workshop was presented on April 27th in Kennedy Library’s Windows computer lab
with an approximate length of 90 minutes. Although ten students signed up through the library’s
website only one student actually attended. Because of this, the workshop did not utilize
instruction and instead the student was allowed to work through the worksheet on her own and
ask questions if she needed an explanation on something. This was disappointing, as there was
no way to test improvements in the actual instruction, and this workshop acted more like a
tutoring session, something that was previously done in CSC 313. However, the student did seem
engaged in the activity and worked through the worksheet diligently.

Reflection:
Overall, I believe that the activity was a success in helping introduce students to some of
the basic concepts of computer programming and potentially increased their interest in learning
more about the field. Prior to the project, I wasn’t entirely sure what I wanted to do after the
completion of my degree, but this project has shown me how rewarding it can be to teach
students some new things. I feel I have a better understanding of all that goes into the
programming projects. All the research I completed during this process allowed me to better
understand what kinds of topics should be covered with students new to programming, their
potential thought processes and some teaching methods that can better help students digest new
information.

If I were given more time to work on the project, I would attempt to present this activity
with a group of students over a longer period of time. I feel that making it a multi day outreach
program allows for me to go in depth with different concepts and design programs that highlight
each of these topics. One thing I noticed from the classroom presentation was that some of the
crafty students figured out that I gave them the full code for my provided example question and
that they could simply copy and paste the code without putting any effort into thinking about the
solution. In the future, I would change this example code into pseudocode so that students still
have a guideline to follow when trying to write their implementation without simply giving them
the answer right away. Also, as students seemed to struggle with the idea that variables in python
are overwritten each time they are set equal to something, I would implement something along
the lines of a concept check which would emphasize this fact to the students. The final change
would be to the overall format of the worksheet documents as some students expressed that they
felt lost and overwhelmed by the large blocks of text throughout the document. To address this
feedback I feel that it would be better to use bullet points that can hopefully be easier for students
to follow along with.
References:

California’s k-12 Computer Science Standards. California Department of Education. PDF File

Willingham, Daniel T. Why Don’t Students Like School?: A Cognitive Scientist Answers
Questions About How the Mind Works and What It Means for Your Classroom. San Francisco,
CA: Jossey-Bass, 2010. PDF File. 4 February 2022.

Scott, Allison. Computer Science in California’s Schools: An Analysis of Access, Enrollment, and
Equity. 17 June, 2019. PDF File. 5 February 2022.

Koshy, Sonia. The California Computer Science Access Report. 1 September, 2021. Web.
https://www.kaporcenter.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/09/KC21007_CSCA_Access_Report.pdf
Accessed 21 May, 2022.

Pea, Roy. The Buggy Path to the Development of Programming Expertise. January, 1987. Web. 4
April 2022.

Xie, Benjamin. A theory of instruction for introductory programming skills. 27 January, 2019.
Web. 18 April, 2022. https://doi.org/10.1080/08993408.2019.1565235

Krishnamurthi, Shriram. Programming Paradigms and Beyond. 2019. Web. 5 April, 2022.
https://cs.brown.edu/~sk/Publications/Papers/Published/kf-prog-paradigms-and-beyond/paper.pd
f

Appendices:
Building a Mad Lib in Python

What is a Mad Lib?

Mad Libs is a word game where one player prompts others for a list of words to
substitute for blanks in a story before reading it aloud. An example is provided below.

Computers represent data and information in different ways compared to humans. We

think of things like words and sentences, while a computer represents these as
something called strings.

The first thing we should understand is the concept of a String. A string is a

representation of a sequence of characters. Some examples of Strings could be a
1. Single characters (“a”, “b” , “1”, etc)
2. Words (“Apple”, “computer”, etc)
3. Sentences (“Hello, World!”, “This is a String example”, etc).

Now that we understand what a String is, let’s look at some commands that will act as
building blocks for our Mad Lib Program
To create our Mad Lib program, we will go to this webpage:
https://pythontutor.com/live.html#mode=edit

Python Tutor’s Live Programming Mode allows us to type our code and immediately see
the output.

This is what you should be seeing on your screen. We’ll type all our code into the
LARGE BOX under “Write code in Python 3.6”. The “1” shows us where the first line of
the code will go.

Note: If you want to rerun your code use the “<< First” button at the bottom of the page
to reset and then use “Next >” to run code line by line or “Last >>” to run the entire code.

1) The first thing we may want to do is display a String on our screen. To

do this we want to use the print command:

print(“I’ll display this on the screen”)

Variables: Computers can assign various different values to variables. In some other
computer languages like JAVA we would need to tell the computer the type of the
variable (string, integer, character), but Python is extremely convenient and can
determine the type when we assign a value to it.

2) We can also store any String that we want to save for later and display
it on the screen like this:

message = “I want to use this string later”

print(message)

3) We can also combine two strings, which is called concatenation in

Computer Science terms.

print(“Hello World,”, “it’s such a nice day!”)

Input: In this program we want to simulate the blank spaces in our story. To
achieve this we will use something provided by the programming language. Input
allows us to print a string to the screen (like a question) and the user can type a
response.

4) Okay, we now know how to display String to the screen. But we want
people to type their responses for our Mad Lib. We can do this by using the
input command in Python.

Value = input(“Enter your name: ”)

print(Value)

5) So, if we want to think about it terms of our Mad Lib our code should
look something like this:

Input1 = input(“Adjective: “)

6) The final piece for our Mad Lib puzzle is to insert the response to each
question into our sentences. We can use the same format as when we
concatenated the two strings to concatenate our user’s response.

print(“It was a”, Input1, “and stormy night”)

Now that we have these blocks, we can build our Mad Lib program.Take the next few
minutes to create your own Mad Lib game that has 3 lines and 3 inputs. Take in all the
inputs first and then print out your story. Remember that a Mad Lib is a story and has
a beginning, middle and end. You must have at least 1 sentence where the input
is in the middle of the sentence.

Keep in mind, you may be called to share your Mad Lib.

If you need some help thinking of certain words
Nouns:

apple daughter island sidewalk title patch

badge earthquake judge smoke umbrella playground

bubble feast lamp bathtub vegetable mustang

bucket frame month son visitor basket

cloth ghost ocean stage year furniture

coach giraffe plane throne day posion

Verbs:

reach yell fix kick open allow

run bake grab land pass end

stay call hang lock promise fasten

talk chase imagine mix swim gather

turn drop itch notice untie jog

walk escape jump obey vanish visit

Adjectives:

abundant calm hot lazy quick thankful

angry dirty huge light quiet vast

beautiful dry important obnoxious rich warm

big early jealous petite scary wet

brave easy kind plain short worried

broken empty late powerful slow young

Adverbs:

angrily cheerfully hastily lazily often truly

anxiously daintily helpfully lightly partially upbeat

beautifully excitedly honestly mockingly rudely vainly

blindly extremely innocently more safely warmly

bravely freely instantly neatly soon wisely

calmly generally kindly nervously swiftly wrongly

Making a Quiz Game in Python - A brief Intro to CS Concepts (Version 1)

We will be using Python to create a quiz game in python that keeps track of how many correct
answers the user has gotten.

Computers represent data and information in different ways compared to humans. We

think of things like words and sentences, while a computer represents these as
something called strings.

The first thing we should understand is the concept of a String. A string is a

representation of a sequence of characters. Some examples of Strings could be a
1. Single characters (“a”, “b” , “1”, etc)
2. Words (“Apple”, “computer”, etc)
3. Sentences (“Hello, World!”, “This is a String example”, etc).

Another way that computers represent data is an integer which is one of the ways that
a computer can represent a number. Keep in mind an Integer is always a whole number
so it will never use a decimal point. Some examples of Integers can be 1, 34, 200, etc.

Now that we understand what a String and Integer are, let’s look at some commands
that will help us to create our quiz

To create our quiz program, we will go to this webpage: Python Tutor

Python Tutor’s Code Visualization Mode allows us to type our code and immediately
see the output.

This is what you should be seeing on your screen. We’ll type all our code into the
LARGE BOX under “Write code in Python 3.6”. The “1” shows us where the first line of
the code will go.

When you’re ready to run the code, hit the “Visualize Execution” button. You can run the
code line-by-line using the “Next>” button or run all the code by using the “Last>>”
button.

When you want to make changes to your code, click “Edit this code” which will take you
back to the edit screen
 1) The first thing we may want to do is display a String on our screen. To do
this we will use the idea of “printing”. Most people think of printing as
using a printer and putting text or images on a piece of paper.

print(“I’ll display this on the screen”)

2) If we want to display a number we can use the same print function, with the
only change being that we can replace the string with an integer.

print(100)

Variables: Computers can assign various different values to variables. In some

other computer languages like JAVA we would need to tell the computer the type of
the variable (string, integer, character), but Python is extremely convenient and can
determine the type when we assign a value to it.

3) We can also store any String that we want to save for later and display it on
the screen like this:

message = “I want to use this string later”

print(message)
 4) We can also use variables to save any integers for later usage, we do the
exact same thing except we set the variable equal to a integer instead:

number = 15

5) If we want to add 2 to our integer variable, we could do so as follows:

number = number + 2

What will the new number be?

Input: In this program we want to allow the user to answer our questions. To
achieve this we will use something provided by the programming language. Input
allows us to print a string to the screen (like a question) and the user can type a
response.

6) Okay, we now know how to display Strings to the screen. But we want
people to type their responses for our quiz. We can do this by using the
input command in Python. Let’s try a basic input asking someone for their
name

name = input(“Enter your name: ”)

*** If we look at the “Global frame” box, we can see that the name Alex was
saved in the variable called “name” ***

Note: When running the program with inputs, the “Last>>” button will go up until
the next input. Once you “submit” your input, you will need to hit either “Next” or
“Last” again.
Booleans: In the program we want to check if the user’s answer matches our
correct answer, so we will use a computer data type called a boolean. Simply a
boolean is a value that tells us when a value is true or false. In this program we
will use this for equality, meaning that if two values are equal to each other the
“true” boolean is used.

7) To check our users answers we can use a code block referred to as if-else
that will help us to check for correctness. The code will look something like
this:

if (_________):
print(“Yes, that’s true”)
else:
print(“No, that’s false”)

8) We’ll need to replace the Blank, so we’ll have to use an equal check. For
this we will need to use two equals signs, ==, since one equal sign is used
when assigning variables.

For example, let’s say that the user's answer was saved in Ans1 and the correct
answer is “b”.

if (Ans1 == b)

This means that if the user answer matches the correct answer the boolean value
will come out to equal true and we will go into the first branch that tells the user
their answer was correct, and if the two DO NOT match the boolean will be false
and will go into the else branch, that lets the user know they are wrong
Now let’s put all this knowledge together and create our first question

Let’s write this question:

Who is Mario’s brother?

a) Wario
b) Tony
c) Luigi

It will end up looking something like this:

Note: The line denoted with # are comments to help understand what the line below
does.

# score is set to zero

score = 0
# lets ask the user our first question
print(“Who is Mario’s brother? ”)
print(“a) Wario”)
print(“b) Tony”)
print(“c) Luigi”)
# here’s where the user will input their answer to question 1
ans1 = input()

# questions 2 and 3 go here later

if (ans1 == “c”):
# we add 1 to score when the user gets an answer correct
score = score + 1
else:
# we keep the score the same when the user gets the answer wrong
score = score
# check the answers for Q’s 2 and 3 here later

# let’s show the user how many they got correct

print(“You got”,score,”answers correct out of 3”)
Now, take some time to make your own quiz. Change the first question to
something new and create 2 new questions. Once everyone is ready, you’ll have
your neighbors try and answer your questions and some will have the opportunity
to share their quizzes with the class.

Please fill out this survey, when you are done. This will let me know what you
liked and didn’t like about the activity and will help me to improve the activity in
the future.

Thank you for your participation!

Writing a Trivia Quiz Game using Python Programming (Version 2)

We will be using Python to create a quiz game in python that keeps track of how many correct
answers the user has gotten.

This workshop will go over these Learning Objectives:

● Understand basics of Strings and Integers

● Understand how to print to the screen.
● Understand variables and how they work in Python
● Understand how to prompt for user input and store the result
● Understand how to do basic String Concatenation

Computers represent data and information in different ways compared to humans. We

think of things like words and sentences, while a computer represents these as
something called strings.

The first thing we should understand is the concept of a String. A string is a

representation of a sequence of characters. Some examples of Strings could be a
1. Single characters (“a”, “b” , “1”, etc)
2. Words (“Apple”, “computer”, etc)
3. Sentences (“Hello, World!”, “This is a String example”, etc).

Another way that computers represent data is an integer which is one of the ways that
a computer can represent a number. Keep in mind an Integer is ALWAYS a whole
number so it will never use a decimal point. Some examples of Integers can be 1, 34,
200, etc.

Now that we understand what a String and Integer are, let’s look at some commands
that will help us to create our quiz

● To create our quiz program, we will go to this webpage: Python Tutor

● We’ll type all our code into the LARGE BOX under “Write code in Python 3.6”.
The “1” shows us where the first line of the code will go.

● When you’re ready to run the code, hit the “Visualize Execution” button. You can
run the code line-by-line using the “Next>” button or run all the code by using the
“Last>>” button.
● When you want to make changes to your code, click “Edit this code” which will
take you back to the edit screen
 1) The first thing we may want to do is display a String on our screen. To do
this we will use the method of “printing”. Most people think of printing as
using a printer and putting text or images on a piece of paper.

print(“I’ll display this on the screen”)

2) If we want to display a number we can use the same print function, with the
only change being that we can replace the string with an integer.

print(100)

Variables: Computers can assign various different values to variables. In some other
computer languages like JAVA we would need to tell the computer the type of the
variable (string, integer, character), but Python is extremely convenient and can
determine the type when we assign a value to it.

3) We can also store any String that we want to save for later and display it on
the screen like this:

message = “I want to use this string later”

print(message)
 4) We can also use variables to save any integers for later usage, we do the
exact same thing except we set the variable equal to a integer instead:

number = 15

5) If we want to add 2 to our integer variable, we could do so as follows:

number = number + 2

Concept Check

What will the new number be?

number

Input: In this program we want to allow the user to answer our questions. To
achieve this we will use something provided by the programming language. Input
allows us to print a string to the screen (like a question) and the user can type a
response.

6) Okay, we now know how to display Strings to the screen. But we want
people to type their responses for our quiz. We can do this by using the
input command in Python. Let’s try a basic input asking someone for their
name

value = input(“Enter your name: ”)

*** If we look at the “Global frame” box, we can see that the name Alex was
saved in the variable called “value” ***
Note: When running the program with inputs, the “Last>>” button will go up until
the next input. Once you “submit” your input, you will need to hit either “Next” or
“Last” again.

CONCEPT CHECK

Show what will be stored in name after each line is run:

name = “Michael”
name = “Joe”
name

Booleans: In the program we want to check if the user’s answer matches our
correct answer, so we will use a computer data type called a boolean. Simply a
boolean is a value that tells us when a value is true or false. In this program we
will use this for equality, meaning that if two values are equal to each other the
“true” boolean is used.

7) To check our users answers we can use a code block referred to as if-else
that will help us to check for correctness. The code will look something like
this:

if (_________):
print(“Yes, that’s true”)
else:
print(“No, that’s false”)

8) We’ll need to replace the Blank, so we’ll have to use an equal check. For
this we will need to use two equals signs, ==, since one equal sign is used
when assigning variables.
For example, let’s say that the user's answer was saved in Ans1 and the correct
answer is “b”.

if (Ans1 == b)

This means that:

● If it does match, it will go into the first branch
● If it does not match, it will go into the second branch

Now let’s put all this knowledge together and create our first question

Let’s try to write this question:

What statue is outside of the Baker Building?

a) Newton
b) Edison
c) Einstein
What is your answer?

Here is the Pseudo-code (not actual code) to create this:

● Create a variable to track score, set it to 0

● Print your question
a. Print answer 1
b. Print answer 2
c. Print answer 3
● Create variable to keep track of user answer, use input to get the user’s response

Questions 2 and 3 will go here

● If the user answer equals the correct answer

○ Increase the users score by 1
● Otherwise
○ Leave the score the same
● Print the users final score out of the number of questions
Now take the time to create your quiz:
1. Change the first question to something new
2. Add two new questions
3. If you get stuck at any point, please ask questions

When you are done, please use this link: tinyurl.com/CSSurvey0504 to take a
survey to answer questions about this workshop

Thank you for your participation!