A fresh look at novice programmers' performance and their teachers' expectations

This paper describes the results of an ITiCSE working group convened in 2013 to review and revisit the influential ITiCSE 2001 McCracken working group that reported [18] on novice programmers' ability to solve a specified programming problem. Like that study, the one described here asked students to implement a simple program. Unlike the original study, students' in this study were given significant scaffolding for their efforts, including a test harness. Their knowledge of programming concepts was also assessed via a standard language-neutral survey. One of the significant findings of the original working group was that students were less successful at the programming task than their teachers expected, so in this study teachers' expectations were explicitly gathered and matched with students' performance. This study found a significant correlation between students' performance in the practical task and the survey, and a significant effect on performance in the practical task attributable to the use of the test harness. The study also found a much better correlation between teachers' expectations of their students' performance than in the 2001 working group.

[1]  Arpita Ghosh,et al.  Incentivizing participation in online forums for education , 2013, EC '13.

[2]  Kimmo Kuortti,et al.  European Credit Transfer System , 2007 .

[3]  B. Rittle-Johnson,et al.  Developing Conceptual Understanding and Procedural Skill in Mathematics: An Iterative Process. , 2001 .

[4]  Christopher R. Jones,et al.  Net generation or Digital Natives: Is there a distinct new generation entering university? , 2010, Comput. Educ..

[5]  Marja Kuittinen,et al.  An Experiment on Using Roles of Variables in Teaching Introductory Programming , 2005, Comput. Sci. Educ..

[6]  Mark Guzdial,et al.  A multi-national, multi-institutional study of assessment of programming skills of first-year CS students , 2001, ITiCSE-WGR '01.

[7]  Colin J. Fidge,et al.  What vs. how: comparing students' testing and coding skills , 2013, ACE '13.

[8]  Raymond Lister,et al.  Relationships between reading, tracing and writing skills in introductory programming , 2008, ICER '08.

[9]  Acm Ieee-Cs Joint Curriculum Task Force.  Computing Curricula 2001: Computer Science , 2002 .

[10]  Jens Bennedsen,et al.  Programming in context: a model-first approach to CS1 , 2004 .

[11]  Michael Kölling,et al.  Objects First with Java - A Practical Introduction Using BlueJ (5th Edition) , 2002 .

[12]  Ernesto Cuadros-Vargas,et al.  Computing Curricula 2013: Computer Science - Update on the Strawman Report from the ACM/IEEE-CS Task Force , 2013 .

[13]  Mark Guzdial,et al.  The FCS1: a language independent assessment of CS1 knowledge , 2011, SIGCSE.

[14]  Mark Guzdial,et al.  Assessing fundamental introductory computing concept knowledge in a language independent manner , 2010 .

[15]  Mark Guzdial,et al.  Computer Science Curriculum 2008: An Interim Revision of CS 2001 , 2008 .

[16]  Kent L. Beck,et al.  Test-driven Development - by example , 2002, The Addison-Wesley signature series.

[17]  P. Kirschner,et al.  Taking the Load Off a Learner's Mind: Instructional Design for Complex Learning , 2003 .

[18]  Mark Guzdial,et al.  Of Black and Glass Boxes: Scaffolding for Doing and Learning , 1996, ICLS.

[19]  Michael E. Caspersen,et al.  Here, there and everywhere - on the recurring use of turtle graphics in CS1 , 2000, ACSE '00.

[20]  Janine Rogalski,et al.  Acquisition of Programming Knowledge and Skills , 1990 .

[21]  Yifat Ben-David Kolikant.  (Some) grand challenges of computer science education in the digital age: a socio-cultural perspective , 2012, WiPSCE.

[22]  Sue Bennett,et al.  The 'digital natives' debate: A critical review of the evidence , 2008, Br. J. Educ. Technol..