Background and Context. Live coding is a pedagogical technique where an instructor writes code in front of their class. The literature on live coding consists primarily of experiments and case studies, and few researchers have sought to understand how instructors actually employ live coding in their classrooms.

Objectives. In this work, we seek to gain an in-depth understanding of how instructors use live coding, including what they are teaching with live coding, how live coding fits in with other lecture activities, and how instructors expect students to engage.

Method. We conducted semi-structured interviews with 22 instructors who have experience with live coding and we analyzed the results using thematic analysis.

Findings. Our findings suggest that live coding is a flexible tool that is used in a variety of ways across the CS curriculum. Live coding can fit into many different lecture styles, and is commonly paired with active learning activities like peer instruction or coding exercises. Instructors valued that live coding offered many opportunities for student interaction, but they often felt these opportunities were not fully taken advantage of in practice. Instructors had mixed feelings about whether students should type along with them during live coding, and providing or restricting access to the completed code or lecture recordings was sometimes seen as a way to nudge student behaviors during lectures.

Implications. Our work contextualizes prior studies on the efficacy of live coding and informs future directions for exploration, which can include examining the affective impacts of live coding and exploring how we might augment live coding to improve how we impart knowledge of processes and procedures. In addition, our work highlights possibilities for designing tools for the CS classroom that can encourage student participation in live coding and facilitate lecture delivery.