The Effect of Basic Instruction on Problem Solving Skills over an Extended Period of Time

In this study twelve undergraduate students were exposed to sixteen weeks of BASIC instruction. A repeated measures design was set up to measure changes in problem solving and computer anxiety at the 0-week, 4-week, 9-week, and 16-week intervals. Language competency measures were also collected and related to problem solving. Results include a significant increase in problem-solving skills from pretreatment to posttreatment, with the greatest increase occurring during the 4-week to 16-week interval. Related to this finding was a significant decrease in computer anxiety from pretreatment to posttreatment, with the greatest decrease occurring during the 0-week to 4-week interval. Based on these two findings, we have inferred that student programmers need first to accommodate system-related anxiety before they can adequately learn features of the BASIC programming language that affect problem solving. We also related problem-solving skills and language competency measures and found significant, positive correlations—that is, those who performed better when using the language, via a midterm test on BASIC, an instructional piece of software they developed, and final course grade, also scored higher on the problem-solving instruments. These findings strongly suggest a link between language competency and problem solving.

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