Online Programming Tutorials and a Recommender System

Code.org has created an enormous interest in its hour-of-code initiative.  The authors wanted to be part of that initiative and made the following simple hypothesis: an hour of code tutorial from code.org can be successfully identified and delivered to students.  The claim has not proven true because the authors were not able to adequately determine what tutorials to use.  An analysis of the literature identifies code.org as an advocacy organization.  An analysis of the existing offering of tutorials highlights their reliance on visual programming in stylized languages with continual feedback in gaming contexts.   However, the organization of the tutorials is too haphazard and evolving for the professors to conveniently identify a useful tutorial. A Recommender System should be implemented to help students get matched to the right tutorial.  Characteristics of this Recommender System are discussed.