TY - GEN
T1 - A fresh look at novice programmers' performance and their teachers' expectations
AU - Utting, Ian
AU - Tew, Allison Elliott
AU - McCracken, Mike
AU - Thomas, Lynda
AU - Bouvier, Dennis
AU - Frye, Roger
AU - Paterson, James
AU - Caspersen, Michael
AU - Kolikant, Yifat Ben David
AU - Sorva, Juha
AU - Wilusz, Tadeusz
PY - 2013
Y1 - 2013
N2 - 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.
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.
KW - Assessment
KW - CS1
KW - Programming
KW - Replication
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=84893416747&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1145/2543882.2543884
DO - 10.1145/2543882.2543884
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AN - SCOPUS:84893416747
SN - 9781450326650
T3 - ITiCSE-WGR 2013 - Proceedings of the ACM Conference on Innovation and Technology in Computer Science Education
SP - 15
EP - 32
BT - ITiCSE-WGR 2013 - Proceedings of the ACM Conference on Innovation and Technology in Computer Science Education
PB - Association for Computing Machinery
T2 - 18th ACM Conference on Innovation and Technology in Computer Science Education, ITiCSE-WGR 2013
Y2 - 1 July 2013 through 3 July 2013
ER -