Felienne's interest in computers started at an early age. From the age of seven she had a computer in her house on which she was always creating things. Games, but also little useful programs, such as her own digital piggy bank or a calorie counter for her mother. Felienne explains:
"I think my interest started because I like designing and making. I used to really enjoy creating drawings of LEGO projects and building them, and making clothes. Programming is the ultimate form of making: you don't need any materials and you can try everything over and over again endlessly, because nothing breaks. Unlike a sweater that you have to pull out if you knit a stitch wrong.”
What is your research about?
I'm researching how people learn to program in the best possible way. That research has two different sides. Sometimes I research the learning side and examine classrooms, for example, to see what students find easy or difficult. Or I look at the teacher: what do they need to know to teach programming well. This is methodologically quite traditional educational research: how do things function in the classroom and how can we make it better? This fits well within the Behavioral Sciences department and especially within the Lerarenacademie (teacher training academy), where many colleagues also research on how we support students and teachers.
But my research also has a technical component, because teaching often involves "grown up languages" like Python or Java. These are too complicated for the middle school age children I am teaching (children between 10 and 14 year olds). I have therefore created a new programming language that is easier for children to learn, called Hedy. Within Hedy, you learn programming though little steps. The questions that arose were mainly Computer Science questions: are the existing tools and techniques within programming languages able to support us in making a gradual language that works in steps?
It turned out to be possible but only with a lot of effort; the tools had to be modified and so I recently wrote a paper on a technique that makes creating gradual languages easier. In that research, the topic is programming language design, and the students are within this context the ones who “create a problem”, because they do not understand ordinary languages well enough.
How do you make programming accessible?
There are a few reasons why programming is difficult. First, you often have to learn a lot at once: the concepts of programming such as input and output, or conditions (the famous if-then-else), as well as the right syntax like brackets or commas. Programming languages crash if you type something wrong. In Python, if you put a space in the wrong place, you already get an error. Because you have to memorize concepts and syntax at the same time you get a cognitive overload and therefore don't remember what you learn that well. My programming language Hedy decouples: you first learn the concepts in a simple language that resembles human language, and only later do you learn the correct syntax.
Hedy started as a small project for my own class and is now a global project used by tens of thousands of students every day. I get emails from all over the world, from Pakistan to Venezuela, from teachers telling me that Hedy works really well for them, and that students learn much easier than working with other languages. Those emails bring tears of joy in my eyes!
Another reason that programming is hard to learn is that almost all programming languages use commands in English. This is convenient for professional programmers because everyone can work together, but for a ten-year-old child this is of course quite difficult. Even in Dutch, kids make mistakes in English words that sound different to us, like "else" or "range" but if you write Chinese or Arabic, a code like "print" is already impossible to create; you don't even know where the 'p' is on the keyboard because you are unfamiliar that letter.
That's why Hedy has been modified so that it can work in all languages, and has already been translated into 32 different languages. Hedy has also been made suited for visually impaired children: you can have the output read aloud to you (which, by the way, is also great fun for sighted children).
What do you hope to accomplish?
It is my dream that all students in the Netherlands can learn programming. Unfortunately, that dream is still quite far away: computer science is only taught at half of all highschools in the Netherlands, in the upper grades. And that's way too late. When students are 15, they have unfortunately often already developed stereotypes about programming. For example, that it is boring and difficult. Especially girls and children without computer experience develop these stereotypes.
So we need to start early and with a mandatory course, so everyone can discover whether they have a talent, and interest for programming. An hour a week of programming for all firstgraders (brugklassers) in the Netherlands is quite feasible, and at the same time would also do a lot for the digital literacy of our country.
What is the social importance of your field?
Programming is in the news every day. Just this week because the Onderwijsraad called for reservations in the use of automatic grading software. But how is a teacher supposed to actually know how such software works? Because of the lack of proper understanding of software, problems arise, even in the field of education.
And what about the Instagram algorithm? How can it be that I only get to see pictures of cakes and knitting, but my husband of weightlifting, and sawing and drilling in the same app? These are controlled by algorithms that are not always in your favor. And apps like AirBnN? Many people don't want anyone to be able to rent out their homes at all, for various reasons. Then we must also understand how complicated it is to restrict such an app. In short, software is all around us and then it's important if everyone also has a basic understanding.
What has doing research in schools brought you?
As a scientist it is sometimes difficult to do research at a school because you don't always know what the problems are and what is really useful. I only really saw that myself when I started working at a school.
Working with schools is really important. Not so much in the phase when the researchers have already made a plan of what needs to be done, but in the problem analysis phase. Too often I see schools being flown in only just before a deadline: "Can we solve problem X with you?" Then there is no room left for a school to say, "Hey, wait a minute: X is not our biggest problem at all!" since the whole project has already been developed. I hope I can address that attitude in my new role.
October 3rd will be your first day at VU in this role and you will be giving a talk on educational research and computer science. What are you going to talk about?
I'm going to talk about my path from researcher to the classroom and back again. I went into the classroom when I started researching teaching because I really wanted to understand what was so difficult about programming. This gave me great insights and it really allowed me to achieve new things; without teaching in a school weekly, Hedy would never have been created!
And how do you hope the students walk away after the lecture?
I hope they see that they don’t have to choose between being a teacher or being a top scientist! You can combine these professions and careers; that's when the most beautiful things happen. And you also set an example for your students: because who gets to be taught by a professor at school? My high schoolers are! That way they also learn something about how science works and maybe get an interest in science themselves. Especially important at my school where there are many students from immigrant backgrounds, and these kids often don't see themselves as someone who can and want to become scientists.
If you're not working. Where can we find you then?
Outside! I really enjoy running and go out about four or five times a week, usually early in the morning in nature. Especially at the moment, because in a month I will be running the New York marathon!
After work, I'm usually on the couch watching Netflix with my husband, or crafting. I still love designing my own clothes. After work, I prefer not to sit on the computer, but rather working on something tangible.
Want to read more about Felienne Hermans?
- Interview “Maak informatica toegankelijk voor álle leerlingen” (in Dutch)
- Programmeren als schoolvak naast wiskunde en Engels (in Dutch)
- Luister de podcast De technoloog van BNR radio met Felienne Hermans (in Dutch)
Photocredits: Joni Israeli.