Successful students' strategies for getting unstuck

McCartney, Robert; Eckerdal, Anna; Moström, Jan Erik; Sanders, Kate; Zander, Carol

doi:10.1145/1268784.1268831

Cited by 34 publications

(20 citation statements)

References 11 publications

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“…Seeking help from people, even via social networks, highlights the importance of the social learning theory. [6] study showed that students most commonly follow the social aspect despite the diverse strategies. Engagement in Pra1 positively correlates with engagement in Pra2.…”

Section: Co2mentioning

confidence: 96%

“…[3] noted that when programming students get stuck, they frequently search the textbook for solutions. [6] reported that their subjects read, looked information up on the Internet, and used tools. Subjects sought help from peers, their instructor, or other faculty members.…”

Section: Literature Reviewmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Research that considers the students' voice, as well as its scientific analysis and synthesis, is scarce. This research intends to fill the gap by capitalizing on the personal experiences of students [1,6,10] who completed at least one computer programming course at the undergraduate level, prior research results, and the experiences of higher education experts in the field. These insights were thoroughly investigated to understand how students learn computer programming in order to design a computer programming learning model that can be evaluated and developed as well as facilitate the education of those who utilize it.…”

Section: Problem Statementmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Engagement in Pra1 positively correlates with engagement in Pra2. Furthermore, [6] study shed light on the importance of 'inventing tasks above and beyond the assigned work'. The Pra2 subsequent chain of action is independent from that of Pra1.…”

Section: Co2mentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Many scholars have acknowledged that computer programming is not easy for many students [1][2][3][4][5][6][7][8]. Despite the wealth of general learning theories and research that addressed learning computer programming in particular [9,10], pessimism remains prevalent about their effects on classroom practice [11,12].…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

See 4 more Smart Citations

Learning Programming: A Model Emerging from Data

Hawi¹

2014

IJCA

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Learning computer programming is a prominent issue in the fields of computer science and education. This paper is an attempt to address this issue by investigating the experiences of undergraduate university students who studied computer programming. A total of 260 computer science and engineering students (210 males and 50 females) were recruited from three geographically distant campuses. They were surveyed with a questionnaire that exhibited good internal reliability. Eventually, a learning model emerged from the data. It consisted of three independent structures that included most of the study times under focus. The study times creatively and dynamically interact stimulated by learning needs and sustained by learning passion. In addition, while some indices of confirmatory factor analysis indicated that the learning model is an adequate fit, others suggested that it needs improvement, which should be considered by future research.

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Section: Co2mentioning

confidence: 96%

Section: Literature Reviewmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Problem Statementmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Co2mentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Learning Programming: A Model Emerging from Data

Hawi¹

2014

IJCA

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Explicit programming strategies

et al. 2020

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Software developers solve a diverse and wide range of problems. While software engineering research often focuses on tools to support this problem solving, the strategies that developers use to solve problems are at least as important. In this paper, we offer a novel approach for enabling developers to follow explicit programming strategies that describe how an expert tackles a common programming problem. We define explicit programming strategies, grounding our definition in prior work both within software engineering and in other professions which have adopted more explicit procedures for problem solving. We then present a novel notation called Roboto and a novel strategy tracker tool that explicitly represent programming strategies and frame executing strategies as a collaborative effort between human abilities to make decisions and computer abilities to structure process and persist information. In a formative evaluation, 28 software developers of varying expertise completed a design task and a debugging task. We found that, compared to developers who are free to choose their own strategies, developers given explicit strategies experienced their work as more organized, systematic, and predictable, but also more constrained. Developers using explicit strategies were objectively more successful at the design and debugging tasks. We discuss the implications of Roboto and these findings, envisioning a thriving ecosystem of explicit strategies that accelerate and improve developers' programming problem solving.

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Liminal spaces and learning computing

McCartney

Boustedt

Eckerdal

et al. 2009

European Journal of Engineering Education

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, European Journal of Engineering Education, 1469-5898, Volume 34, Issue 4, 2009, Pages 383 ? 391.'Threshold concepts' are concepts that, among other things, transform the way a student looks at a discipline. Although the term 'threshold' might suggest that the transformation occurs at a specific point in time, an 'aha' moment, it seems more common (at least in computing) that a longer time period is required. This time period is referred to as the 'liminal space'. In this paper, we summarise our findings concerning how computing students experience the liminal space and discuss how this might affect teaching. Most of our findings so far relate to software engineering. As it is likely that similar liminal spaces occur in other engineering disciplines, these findings have relevance across engineering education.Peer reviewe

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Successful students' strategies for getting unstuck

Cited by 34 publications

References 11 publications

Learning Programming: A Model Emerging from Data

Learning Programming: A Model Emerging from Data

Explicit programming strategies

Liminal spaces and learning computing

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