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

Ian Utting; Alison Elliott Tew; Mike McCracken; Lynda Thomas; Dennis Bouvier; Roger Frye; James Paterson; Michael Caspersen; Yfat Ben-David Kolikant; Juha Sorva; Tadeusz Wilusz

doi:10.1145/2543882.2543884

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

Ian Utting, Alison Elliott Tew, Mike McCracken, Lynda Thomas, Dennis Bouvier, Roger Frye, James Paterson, Michael Caspersen, Yfat Ben-David Kolikant , Juha Sorva, Tadeusz Wilusz

Research output: Chapter in Book/Report/Conference proceeding › Conference contribution

45 Citations (Scopus)

Abstract

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.

Original language	English
Title of host publication	ITiCSE -WGR '13 Proceedings of the ITiCSE Working Group Reports Conference on Innovation and Technology in Computer Science Education-Working Group Reports
Publisher	Association for Computing Machinery (ACM)
Pages	15-32
Number of pages	18
ISBN (Electronic)	978-1-4503-2665-0
DOIs	https://doi.org/10.1145/2543882.2543884
Publication status	Published - Dec 2013

Keywords

computer programming
programming
student learning
problem solving

ASJC Scopus subject areas

Computer Science (miscellaneous)

Documents and Links

10.1145/2543882.2543884

https://www.cs.kent.ac.uk/events/iticse2013/

Cite this

Utting, I., Elliott Tew, A., McCracken, M., Thomas, L., Bouvier, D., Frye, R., Paterson, J., Caspersen, M., Ben-David Kolikant , Y., Sorva, J., & Wilusz, T. (2013). A fresh look at novice programmers' performance and their teachers' expectations. In ITiCSE -WGR '13 Proceedings of the ITiCSE Working Group Reports Conference on Innovation and Technology in Computer Science Education-Working Group Reports (pp. 15-32). Association for Computing Machinery (ACM). https://doi.org/10.1145/2543882.2543884

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author = "Ian Utting and {Elliott Tew}, Alison and Mike McCracken and Lynda Thomas and Dennis Bouvier and Roger Frye and James Paterson and Michael Caspersen and {Ben-David Kolikant}, Yfat and Juha Sorva and Tadeusz Wilusz",

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Utting, I, Elliott Tew, A, McCracken, M, Thomas, L, Bouvier, D, Frye, R, Paterson, J, Caspersen, M, Ben-David Kolikant , Y, Sorva, J & Wilusz, T 2013, A fresh look at novice programmers' performance and their teachers' expectations. in ITiCSE -WGR '13 Proceedings of the ITiCSE Working Group Reports Conference on Innovation and Technology in Computer Science Education-Working Group Reports. Association for Computing Machinery (ACM), pp. 15-32. https://doi.org/10.1145/2543882.2543884

A fresh look at novice programmers' performance and their teachers' expectations. / Utting, Ian; Elliott Tew, Alison; McCracken, Mike et al.
ITiCSE -WGR '13 Proceedings of the ITiCSE Working Group Reports Conference on Innovation and Technology in Computer Science Education-Working Group Reports. Association for Computing Machinery (ACM), 2013. p. 15-32.

Research output: Chapter in Book/Report/Conference proceeding › Conference contribution

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AU - Paterson, James

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AB - 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.

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Utting I, Elliott Tew A, McCracken M, Thomas L, Bouvier D, Frye R et al. A fresh look at novice programmers' performance and their teachers' expectations. In ITiCSE -WGR '13 Proceedings of the ITiCSE Working Group Reports Conference on Innovation and Technology in Computer Science Education-Working Group Reports. Association for Computing Machinery (ACM). 2013. p. 15-32 doi: 10.1145/2543882.2543884

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

Abstract

Keywords

ASJC Scopus subject areas

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