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

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Volume 36, Issue 4, December 2004

Beyond the ballot box

Draw a computer scientist

Survey calculations

Students becoming political and "incorrect" through agile methods

Information systems and the overview report for computing curricula 2004

A clandestine religious meeting

Academic honesty in the classroom

IT security and data assurance

Banner year for UPE

Controversy on how to teach CS 1

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

Teaching networking congestion control

Developing a professional doctorate in computing

The practicum in computer science education

Reading types in C using the right left walk method

ICE™ and ICE/T™

SQL-based discovery of exact and approximate functional dependencies

Bioinformatics and computing curricula 2001

Experimentation in the computer programming lab

Challenges and the elements of success in undergraduate research

Searching the web to develop inquiry and collaborative skills

A problem-based approach to teaching design patterns

An alternative problem for backtracking and bounding

Cryptanalysis of some encryption/cipher schemes using related key attack

It is time to emphasize arraylists over arrays in Java-based first programming courses

A first course in genetic programming

Conceptualizing data structures

Interacting factors that predict success and failure in a CS1 course

Teaching by analogy

Towards a more effective way of teaching a cybersecurity basics course

Volume 36, Issue 3, September 2004

Volume 36, Issue 2, June 2004

Volume 36, Issue 1, March 2004

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

Content Provider	ACM Digital Library
Author	Fitzgerald, Sue Hamer, John Thomas, Lynda McCartney, Robert Simon, Beth Sanders, Kate Lister, Raymond Fone, William Adams, Elizabeth S. Lindholm, Morten Moström, Jan Erik Seppälä, Otto
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.
Starting Page	119
Ending Page	150
Page Count	32
File Format	PDF
ISSN	00978418
DOI	10.1145/1041624.1041673
Journal	ACM SIGCSE Bulletin (SGCS)
Volume Number	36
Issue Number	4
Language	English
Publisher	Association for Computing Machinery (ACM)
Publisher Date	1978-02-01
Publisher Place	New York
Access Restriction	One Nation One Subscription (ONOS)
Content Type	Text
Resource Type	Article

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