ABSTRACT
The McCracken et al. working group paper is often cited for the proposition that students can't program. In that study, students from four different institutions were each assigned to implement one of three versions of a calculator. More than half of the students failed to produce a program that compiled and executed in the time assigned.
Lost in this discussion, however, is the fact that the original paper had the goal of evaluating its instrument, as well as the students. We examine and adjust their instrument, and present the results of the revised study. With a modifed instrument, we have obtained significantly improved results.
- T. Clear, J. Whalley, P. Robbins, A. Philpott, A. Eckerdal, M. Laakso, and R. Lister. Report on the final BRACElet workshop: Auckland University of Technology, September 2010. J. Applied Computing and Information Technology, 15, 2011.Google Scholar
- P. Denny, A. Luxton-Reilly, and B. Simon. Evaluating a new exam question: Parsons problems. In Proc. of the Fourth international Workshop on Computing Education Research, ICER '08, pages 113--124. ACM, 2008. Google ScholarDigital Library
- R. Lister. Ten years after the McCracken Working Group. ACM Inroads, 2(4):18--19, Dec. 2011. Google ScholarDigital Library
- R. Lister, E. S. Adams, S. Fitzgerald, W. Fone, J. Hamer, M. Lindholm, R. McCartney, J. E. Moström, K. Sanders, O. Seppälä, B. Simon, and L. Thomas. A multi-national study of reading and tracing skills in novice program mers. SIGCSE Bull., 36(4):119--150, June 2004. Google ScholarDigital Library
- M. McCracken. Evaluation of programs for the iticse working group on programming skill assessment, May 2001. http://www.cc.gatech.edu/projects/iticsewg/evaluation.pdf. (Accessed on March 3,2013).Google Scholar
- M. McCracken, V. Almstrum, D. Diaz, M. Guzdial, D. Hagan, Y. B.-D. Kolikant, C. Laxer, L. Thomas, I. Utting, and T. Wilusz. A multi-national, multi-institutional study of assessment of programming skills of first-year cs students. SIGCSE Bull., 33(4):125--180, Dec. 2001. Google ScholarDigital Library
- J. Meyer and R. Land. Threshold concepts and troublesome knowledge: Linkages to ways of thinking and practising within the disciplines. ETL Project Occasional Report 4, School of Education, University of Edinburgh, UK, 2003. http://www.ed.ac.uk/etl/docs/ETLreport4.pdf.Google Scholar
- D. Perkins. The many faces of constructivism. Educational Leadership, 57(3):6--11, 1999.Google Scholar
- J. Sajaniemi. An empirical analysis of roles of variables in novice-level procedural programs. In Proc. IEEE 2002 Symp. on Human Centric Computing Languages and Environments, pages 37--39, 2002. Google ScholarDigital Library
- B. Simon, T.-Y. Chen, G. Lewandowski, R. McCartney, and K. Sanders. Commonsense computing: what students know before we teach (episode 1: sorting). In Proc. of the second international workshop on Computing education research, ICER '06, pages 29--40. ACM, 2006. Google ScholarDigital Library
- L. Smith and J. Cordova. Weighted primary trait analysis for computer program evaluation. J. Comput. Sci. Coll., 20(6):14--19, June 2005. Google ScholarDigital Library
- J. Sweller. Cognitive load during problem solving: effects on learning. Cognitive Science, 12:257--285, 1988.Google ScholarCross Ref
Index Terms
- Can first-year students program yet?: a study revisited
Recommendations
Replicating a Validated CS1 Assessment (Abstract Only)
SIGCSE '16: Proceedings of the 47th ACM Technical Symposium on Computing Science EducationValidated assessments are important for teachers and researchers. A validated assessment is carefully developed to make sure that it is measuring the right things. Computing education needs more and better validated assessments. Validated assessments ...
Meta-cognitive skill training programme for first-year bachelor students using thinking process externalisation environment
We think that to acquire a skill for co-creating knowledge with others cooperatively, it is important to develop meta-cognitive skill, but to do so is not straightforward. In this paper, we attempt to design a thinking skill particularly meta-cognitive ...
Progression Of Computational Thinking Skills In Swedish Compulsory Schools With Block-based Programming
ACE'20: Proceedings of the Twenty-Second Australasian Computing Education ConferenceAlthough Computational Thinking and Programming have become obligatory in many national curricula, the majority of teachers in practice are currently in dire need of support from both the research and teaching community. A national research and teacher ...
Comments