article

A multi-national study of reading and tracing skills in novice programmers

Authors:

Raymond Lister,

Elizabeth S. Adams,

Sue Fitzgerald,

Morten Lindholm,

Robert McCartney,

Jan Erik Moström,

Otto Seppälä,

Lynda ThomasAuthors Info & Claims

ACM SIGCSE Bulletin, Volume 36, Issue 4

Pages 119 - 150

https://doi.org/10.1145/1041624.1041673

Published: 28 June 2004 Publication History

Abstract

A study by a ITiCSE 2001 working group ("the McCracken Group") established that many students do not know how to program at the conclusion of their introductory courses. A popular explanation for this incapacity is that the students lack the ability to problem-solve. That is, they lack the ability to take a problem description, decompose it into sub-problems and implement them, then assemble the pieces into a complete solution. An alternative explanation is that many students have a fragile grasp of both basic programming principles and the ability to systematically carry out routine programming tasks, such as tracing (or "desk checking") through code. This ITiCSE 2004 working group studied the alternative explanation, by testing students from seven countries, in two ways. First, students were tested on their ability to predict the outcome of executing a short piece of code. Second, students were tested on their ability, when given the desired function of short piece of near-complete code, to select the correct completion of the code from a small set of possibilities. Many students were weak at these tasks, especially the latter task, suggesting that such students have a fragile grasp of skills that are a prerequisite for problem-solving.

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Almutairy GJohnson A(2024)Supporting Novice Programmers via the Lens of Instructional DesignNavigating Computer Science Education in the 21st Century10.4018/979-8-3693-1066-3.ch008(149-169)Online publication date: 8-Mar-2024
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Huang YSchunn CGuerra JBrusilovsky P(2024)Why Students Cannot Easily Integrate Component Skills: An Investigation of the Composition Effect in ProgrammingACM Transactions on Computing Education10.1145/367323924:3(1-37)Online publication date: 28-Jun-2024
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Published In

cover image ACM SIGCSE Bulletin

ACM SIGCSE Bulletin Volume 36, Issue 4

December 2004

145 pages

ISSN:0097-8418

DOI:10.1145/1041624

Issue’s Table of Contents

ITiCSE-WGR '04: Working group reports from ITiCSE on Innovation and technology in computer science education
June 2004
152 pages
ISBN:9781450377942
DOI:10.1145/1044550
Publications Chair:
Henry M. Walker
Grinnell College, Grinnell, Iowa

Copyright © 2004 ACM.

Permission to make digital or hard copies of all or part of this work for personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. Copyrights for components of this work owned by others than ACM must be honored. Abstracting with credit is permitted. To copy otherwise, or republish, to post on servers or to redistribute to lists, requires prior specific permission and/or a fee. Request permissions from [email protected]

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Association for Computing Machinery

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Published: 28 June 2004

Published in SIGCSE Volume 36, Issue 4

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https://doi.org/10.4018/979-8-3693-1066-3.ch008
Huang YSchunn CGuerra JBrusilovsky P(2024)Why Students Cannot Easily Integrate Component Skills: An Investigation of the Composition Effect in ProgrammingACM Transactions on Computing Education10.1145/367323924:3(1-37)Online publication date: 28-Jun-2024
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3673239
Macneil SDenny PTran ALeinonen JBernstein SHellas ASarsa SKim J(2024)Decoding Logic Errors: A Comparative Study on Bug Detection by Students and Large Language ModelsProceedings of the 26th Australasian Computing Education Conference10.1145/3636243.3636245(11-18)Online publication date: 29-Jan-2024
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3636243.3636245
Kaleem MHassan MKhurshid S(2024)A Machine Learning-Based Adaptive Feedback System to Enhance Programming Skill Using Computational ThinkingIEEE Access10.1109/ACCESS.2024.339187312(59431-59440)Online publication date: 2024
https://doi.org/10.1109/ACCESS.2024.3391873
Hadad R(2024)The use of makerspaces for the development of computational thinking skills and dispositions: pedagogical practices facilitators useComputer Science Education10.1080/08993408.2024.2374679(1-40)Online publication date: 12-Jul-2024
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