research-article

New CS1 pedagogies and curriculum, the same success factors?

Authors:

Christine Alvarado,

Cynthia Bailey Lee,

Gary GillespieAuthors Info & Claims

SIGCSE '14: Proceedings of the 45th ACM technical symposium on Computer science education

Pages 379 - 384

https://doi.org/10.1145/2538862.2538897

Published: 05 March 2014 Publication History

Abstract

New CS1 curricula and pedagogies have resulted in many positive outcomes over the last several years including lower fail rates and increased long-term retention. Given these positive outcomes, the question becomes how much do the traditional factors of prior experience and confidence still play a role in students' performance in and attitudes about these courses' Furthermore, given that increasingly recommended collaborative pedagogies (e.g. pair programming) force students to interact with their peers for a large percentage of their work in the class, how much does the confidence of their peers affect their own attitudes and performance? This paper presents a study investigating these questions. We find that prior experience and confidence still predict success, but only for some students. We also find that student confidence levels have little to no impact on the attitudes and performance of their peers.

References

[1]

C. Alvarado and Z. Dodds. Women in CS: An evaluation of three promising practices. In Proc. SIGCSE '10, 2010.

Digital Library

[2]

S. Bergin and R. Reilly. Programming: factors that influence success. SIGCSE Bull., 37(1), Feb. 2005.

Digital Library

[3]

D. R. Bernstein. Comfort and experience with computing: are they the same for women and men? SIGCSE Bull., 23(3), Sept. 1991.

Digital Library

[4]

P. Byrne and G. Lyons. The effect of student attributes on success in programming. SIGCSE Bull., 33(3), June 2001.

Digital Library

[5]

M. Guzdial. Exploring hypotheses about media computation. In Proc. of ICER '13. ACM, 2013.

Digital Library

[6]

D. Hagan and S. Markham. Does it help to have some programming experience before beginning a computing degree program? SIGCSE Bull., 32(3), July 2000.

Digital Library

[7]

E. Holden and E. Weeden. The experience factor in early programming education. In Proc. of CITC5 '04. ACM, 2004.

Digital Library

[8]

E. Mazur. Peer Instruction: A User's Manual. Addison-Wesley, 1996.

[9]

C. McDowell and et al. Pair programming improves student retention, confidence, and program quality. Commun. ACM, 49(8), Aug. 2006.

Digital Library

[10]

N. Nagappan and et al. Improving the CS1 experience with pair programming. SIGCSE Bull., 35(1), 2003.

Digital Library

[11]

L. Porter, C. Bailey Lee, and B. Simon. Halving fail rates using peer instruction: a study of four computer science courses. In Proc. of SIGCSE '13, 2013.

Digital Library

[12]

L. Porter and et al. Experience report: a multi-classroom report on the value of peer instruction. In Proc. of ITiCSE '11, 2011.

Digital Library

[13]

L. Porter and B. Simon. Retaining nearly one-third more majors with a trio of instructional best practices in CS1. In Proc. of SIGCSE '13, 2013.

Digital Library

[14]

V. Ramalingam, D. LaBelle, and S. Wiedenbeck. Self-efficacy and mental models in learning to program. SIGCSE Bull., 36(3), June 2004.

Digital Library

[15]

L. Rich, H. Perry, and M. Guzdial. A CS1 course designed to address interests of women. SIGCSE Bull., 36(1), 2004.

Digital Library

[16]

N. Rountree, J. Rountree, and A. Robins. Predictors of success and failure in a CS1 course. SIGCSE Bull., 34(4), Dec. 2002.

Digital Library

[17]

N. Salleh, E. Mendes, and J. C. Grundy. Empirical studies of pair programming for CS/SE teaching in higher education: A systematic literature review. IEEE Trans. on Software Engineering, 37(4), 2011.

Digital Library

[18]

Simon et al. Predictors of success in a first programming course. In Proc. of ACE '06. Australian Computer Society, Inc., 2006.

Digital Library

[19]

A. Tafliovich, J. Campbell, and A. Petersen. A student perspective on prior experience in CS1. In Proc. of SIGCSE '13. ACM, 2013.

Digital Library

[20]

H. G. Taylor and L. C. Mounfield. Exploration of the relationship between prior computing experience and gender on success in college computer science. Journal of Educational Computing Research, 11(4), 1994.

[21]

P. Ventura and B. Ramamurthy. Wanted: CS1 students. no experience required. SIGCSE Bull., 36(1), Mar. 2004.

Digital Library

[22]

B. C. Wilson and S. Shrock. Contributing to success in an introductory computer science course: a study of twelve factors. SIGCSE Bull., 33(1), Feb. 2001.

Digital Library

Cited By

Sibia NBui GWang BTan YZavaleta Bernuy ABauer CWilliams JLiut MPetersen AStephenson BStone JBattestilli LRebelsky SShoop L(2024)Examining Intention to Major in Computer Science: Perceived Potential and ChallengesProceedings of the 55th ACM Technical Symposium on Computer Science Education V. 110.1145/3626252.3630843(1237-1243)Online publication date: 7-Mar-2024
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3626252.3630843
Salguero AVillegas Molina IElizabeth Margulieux LCutts QPorter LStephenson BStone JBattestilli LRebelsky SShoop L(2024)Applying CS0/CS1 Student Success Factors and Outcomes to Biggs' 3P Educational ModelProceedings of the 55th ACM Technical Symposium on Computer Science Education V. 110.1145/3626252.3630781(1168-1174)Online publication date: 7-Mar-2024
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3626252.3630781
Salguero A(2023)Establishing an Empirical Foundation for a Theory of Student Learning and Success in CS1Proceedings of the 2023 ACM Conference on International Computing Education Research - Volume 210.1145/3568812.3603444(52-54)Online publication date: 7-Aug-2023
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3568812.3603444

Index Terms

New CS1 pedagogies and curriculum, the same success factors?
1. Social and professional topics
  1. Professional topics
    1. Computing education
      1. Computing education programs
        Computer science education

Recommendations

A Longitudinal Evaluation of a Best Practices CS1
ICER '20: Proceedings of the 2020 ACM Conference on International Computing Education Research

Over a decade ago, the CS1 course for students without prior programming experience at a large research-intensive university was redesigned to incorporate three best practices in teaching programming: Media Computation, Pair Programming, and Peer ...
CS0 vs. CS1:: Understanding Fears and Confidence amongst Non-majors in Introductory CS Courses
SIGCSE 2023: Proceedings of the 54th ACM Technical Symposium on Computer Science Education V. 1

Previous research has been devoted to improving the experience of non-majors in introductory CS courses. In this study, we compare the experiences of non-majors in two different introductory CS courses, specifically with respect to fears about taking the ...
Effects of Teacher Training in a Computer Science Principles Curriculum on Teacher and Student Skills, Confidence, and Beliefs
SIGCSE '18: Proceedings of the 49th ACM Technical Symposium on Computer Science Education

Common barriers to broad-based adoption of Computer Science in secondary schools include 1) insufficient numbers of trained teachers who are capable of teaching CS courses in K-12 schools, and 2) a narrow base of students interested in taking CS courses ...

Comments

Information & Contributors

Information

Published In

cover image ACM Conferences

SIGCSE '14: Proceedings of the 45th ACM technical symposium on Computer science education

March 2014

800 pages

ISBN:9781450326056

DOI:10.1145/2538862

Conference Chairs:
J. D. Dougherty
J.D. Dougherty, Haverford College
,
Kris Nagel
Georgia Gwinnett College
,
Program Chairs:
Adrienne Decker
Rochester Institute of Technology
,
Kurt Eiselt
University of British Columbia

Copyright © 2014 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]

Sponsors

SIGCSE: ACM Special Interest Group on Computer Science Education

Publisher

Association for Computing Machinery

New York, NY, United States

Publication History

Published: 05 March 2014

Permissions

Request permissions for this article.

Request Permissions

Check for updates

Author Tags

Qualifiers

Research-article

Conference

SIGCSE '14

Sponsor:

SIGCSE

SIGCSE '14: The 45th ACM Technical Symposium on Computer Science Education

March 5 - 8, 2014

Georgia, Atlanta, USA

Acceptance Rates

SIGCSE '14 Paper Acceptance Rate 108 of 274 submissions, 39%;

Overall Acceptance Rate 1,595 of 4,542 submissions, 35%

Upcoming Conference

SIGCSE Virtual 2024

Sponsor:
sigcse

1st ACM Virtual Global Computing Education Conference

December 5 - 8, 2024

Virtual Event , NC , USA

Contributors

Other Metrics

View Article Metrics

Bibliometrics & Citations

Bibliometrics

Article Metrics

3
Total Citations
View Citations
565
Total Downloads

Downloads (Last 12 months)37
Downloads (Last 6 weeks)4

Reflects downloads up to 22 Sep 2024

Other Metrics

View Author Metrics

Citations

Cited By

Sibia NBui GWang BTan YZavaleta Bernuy ABauer CWilliams JLiut MPetersen AStephenson BStone JBattestilli LRebelsky SShoop L(2024)Examining Intention to Major in Computer Science: Perceived Potential and ChallengesProceedings of the 55th ACM Technical Symposium on Computer Science Education V. 110.1145/3626252.3630843(1237-1243)Online publication date: 7-Mar-2024
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3626252.3630843
Salguero AVillegas Molina IElizabeth Margulieux LCutts QPorter LStephenson BStone JBattestilli LRebelsky SShoop L(2024)Applying CS0/CS1 Student Success Factors and Outcomes to Biggs' 3P Educational ModelProceedings of the 55th ACM Technical Symposium on Computer Science Education V. 110.1145/3626252.3630781(1168-1174)Online publication date: 7-Mar-2024
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3626252.3630781
Salguero A(2023)Establishing an Empirical Foundation for a Theory of Student Learning and Success in CS1Proceedings of the 2023 ACM Conference on International Computing Education Research - Volume 210.1145/3568812.3603444(52-54)Online publication date: 7-Aug-2023
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3568812.3603444
Alvarado CUmbelino GMinnes M(2018)The persistent effect of pre-college computing experience on college CS course gradesACM Inroads10.1145/32105519:2(58-64)Online publication date: 27-Apr-2018
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3210551

View Options

Get Access

Login options

Check if you have access through your login credentials or your institution to get full access on this article.

Full Access

Get this Publication

View options

PDF

View or Download as a PDF file.

eReader

View online with eReader.

Media

Figures

Other

Tables

View Table of Contents