What novice programmers don't know

Abstract

Novice programmer knowledge contains a mixture of wellformed, in-transition and muddled conceptual structures. In this paper we describe an analysis of the in-transition and muddled items that are not fully integrated into the novices' cognitive structures. When participants were asked to perform card sorts of programming concepts into categories, 23% of their categories were "ragbags": categories with names such as "don't know," "not sure," or "not applicable" that indicate that the students have little or no knowledge of the concepts placed in those categories.In this study, we find that there are distinct differences in the uses of the ragbags. In particular, we find that terms considered more abstract tend to be placed into Don't Know and Not Sure ragbags more often than concrete terms; and students categorized as low performers tend to use Not Sure far more often than high performers but Don't Know and Not Applicable less often. We also find evidence that the meaningfulness of a concept is likely to be related to the vocabulary used in the classroom, suggesting that students may assimilate abstract concepts into their conceptual structures more quickly if one uses the terms more frequently.

Classifying computing education papers

“…The context dimension does not identify the subject by name and/or code, such as INFT3940 Information Technology Applications, but does identify the general thrust of the subject. Thus the ICER paper entitled What novice programmers don't know [13] has a context of programming, while the paper Narrating data structures: the role of context in CS2 [25] has a context of data structures, and Uncovering student values for hiring in the software industry [2] has a context of professionalism and ethics.…”

Using Expertise as a Framework for Evaluating Requirements Technology

“…Various studies contribute to this representation of expertise and also indicate that joist precincts are not distinctly defined (e.g. [8]). The area within these three points denotes the extent of expertise.…”

Measuring flow in programming education

“…• Learning programming: Programming is not an easy subject to learn, as it requires a correct understanding of abstract concepts which have little meaning for novice programmers [2].…”