Luca Chiodini

About

Hi! I'm a postdoctoral researcher at the Software Institute — USI, Lugano (🇨🇭), where I work in the LuCE research lab. There I obtained a PhD with a dissertation on teaching introductory programming using graphics as a domain under the supervision of Matthias Hauswirth. I also spent a semester abroad at Aalto University (🇫🇮) under the supervision of Juha Sorva.

If you want to get in touch, feel free to write an email to luca@chiodini.org.

I have been working on improving programming education from several angles. I investigated misconceptions about programming languages, the role of expressions while learning Java, and methodological issues with ad hoc instruments for computing education research. My current main project is PyTamaro, an approach to teach programming using the domain of graphics in an engaging way, emphasizing abstraction and problem decomposition. I created an open-source Python library and a web platform which hosts hundreds of activities and dozens of curricula currently used by teachers at multiple educational levels.

A selection of five key publications. Expand the section at the end to view all of them.

Surveying Upper-Secondary Teachers on Programming Misconceptions [PDF] [DOI]
ICER '25 — Luca Chiodini, Joey Bevilacqua, Matthias Hauswirth
Two Approaches for Programming Education in the Domain of Graphics: An Experiment [PDF] [DOI]
‹Programming› '25 — Luca Chiodini, Juha Sorva, Arto Hellas, Otto Seppälä, Matthias Hauswirth
Teaching Programming with Graphics: Pitfalls and a Solution [PDF] [DOI]
SPLASH-E '23 — Luca Chiodini, Juha Sorva, Matthias Hauswirth
Wrong Answers for Wrong Reasons: The Risks of Ad Hoc Instruments [PDF] [DOI]
Koli Calling '21 — Luca Chiodini, Matthias Hauswirth
A Curated Inventory of Programming Language Misconceptions [PDF] [DOI]
ITiCSE '21 — Luca Chiodini, Igor Moreno Santos, Andrea Gallidabino, Anya Tafliovich, André L. Santos, Matthias Hauswirth

View all publications

TIDE: An Educational Live Programming Environment to Compose Graphics with PyTamaro [PDF] [DOI]
PAINT '25 — Joey Bevilacqua, Nathan Coquerel, Luca Chiodini, Igor Moreno Santos, Matthias Hauswirth
Teaching Introductory Programming Using Graphics as a Domain [PDF]
Doctoral Dissertation — Luca Chiodini
The Toolbox of Functions: Teaching Code Reuse in Schools [PDF] [Poster] [DOI]
ECSEE '25 — Luca Chiodini, Joey Bevilacqua, Matthias Hauswirth
Assessing the Understanding of Expressions: A Qualitative Study of Notional-Machine-Based Exam Questions [PDF] [DOI]
Koli Calling '24 — Joey Bevilacqua, Luca Chiodini, Igor Moreno Santos, Matthias Hauswirth
Judicious: API Documentation for Novices [PDF] [DOI]
SPLASH-E '24 — Luca Chiodini, Simone Piatti, Matthias Hauswirth
Using Notional Machines to Automatically Assess Students' Comprehension of Their Own Code (Poster) [PDF] [Poster] [DOI]
SIGCSE '24 — Joey Bevilacqua, Luca Chiodini, Igor Moreno Santos, Matthias Hauswirth
Expressions in Java: Essential, Prevalent, Neglected? [PDF] [DOI]
SPLASH-E '22 — Luca Chiodini, Igor Moreno Santos, Matthias Hauswirth
Conceptual Checks for Programming Teachers [PDF] [DOI]
EC-TEL '21 — Luca Chiodini, Matthias Hauswirth, Andrea Gallidabino

I have been part of the technical team behind the Italian and the International Informatics Olympiad in Teams.
I organized six editions of ABC, an Olympiad-style online programming contest held each year in May.
In 2017, I participated in the first Italian training program in cybersecurity for students. I placed second in a local final challenge and competed with a team in the national final, held in Rome, ranking second.
In 2014, I won a bronze medal at the Italian Olympiad in Informatics.

Over the years I've created and freely shared a number of resources (partially in Italian), which some have found useful:

Blog post: What the global statement really means in Python
Blog post: Tutorial on how to create images and GIFs with Asymptote
Slides of my presentations to train high school students competing in Olympiad in Informatics: regional selection (years 2019, 2018, 2017, 2016) and school selection (years 2019, 2018, 2017).
My Master's degree thesis, done at LuCE Research Lab to better understand misconceptions when learning to program (related slides).
My Bachelor's degree thesis, done at Information Retrieval Laboratory to work towards an automatic approach to identify potential binge drinkers on Twitter (related slides).
My high school thesis, which consisted in developing an automated spelling correction system (related slides).
Theory of computation class notes.
Calculus 1 class notes.
Some solved exercises about signal processing.
An introductory reading about competitive programming for young students.
A guide for moving the first steps with JFlex, a lexical analyzer generator.