research-article

Can first-year students program yet?: a study revisited

Authors:

Carol ZanderAuthors Info & Claims

ICER '13: Proceedings of the ninth annual international ACM conference on International computing education research

Pages 91 - 98

https://doi.org/10.1145/2493394.2493412

Published: 12 August 2013 Publication History

Get Access

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.

References

[1]

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

[2]

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.

Digital Library

Google Scholar

[3]

R. Lister. Ten years after the McCracken Working Group. ACM Inroads, 2(4):18--19, Dec. 2011.

Digital Library

Google Scholar

[4]

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.

Digital Library

Google Scholar

[5]

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

[6]

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.

Digital Library

Google Scholar

[7]

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

[8]

D. Perkins. The many faces of constructivism. Educational Leadership, 57(3):6--11, 1999.

Google Scholar

[9]

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.

Digital Library

Google Scholar

[10]

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.

Digital Library

Google Scholar

[11]

L. Smith and J. Cordova. Weighted primary trait analysis for computer program evaluation. J. Comput. Sci. Coll., 20(6):14--19, June 2005.

Digital Library

Google Scholar

[12]

J. Sweller. Cognitive load during problem solving: effects on learning. Cognitive Science, 12:257--285, 1988.

Crossref

Google Scholar

Cited By

View all

Riese EBälter O(2022)A Qualitative Study of Experienced Course Coordinators’ Perspectives on Assessment in Introductory Programming Courses for Non-CS MajorsACM Transactions on Computing Education10.1145/351713422:4(1-29)Online publication date: 15-Sep-2022
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3517134
Izu C(2020)Using Consistency to Measure CS1 Student’s Comprehension of User-defined Functions2020 IEEE International Conference on Teaching, Assessment, and Learning for Engineering (TALE)10.1109/TALE48869.2020.9368374(1-7)Online publication date: 8-Dec-2020
https://doi.org/10.1109/TALE48869.2020.9368374
Zander CEckerdal AMcCartney RMostrom JSanders KThomas LScharlau BMcDermott RPears ASabin M(2019)Copying Can Be GoodProceedings of the 2019 ACM Conference on Innovation and Technology in Computer Science Education10.1145/3304221.3319783(450-456)Online publication date: 2-Jul-2019
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3304221.3319783
Show More Cited By

Index Terms

Can first-year students program yet?: a study revisited
1. Social and professional topics
  1. Professional topics
    1. Computing education
      1. Computing education programs
        Computer science education

Recommendations

Replicating a Validated CS1 Assessment (Abstract Only)
SIGCSE '16: Proceedings of the 47th ACM Technical Symposium on Computing Science Education

Validated 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 Conference

Although 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

Please enable JavaScript to view thecomments powered by Disqus.

Information & Contributors

Information

Published In

ICER '13: Proceedings of the ninth annual international ACM conference on International computing education research

August 2013

202 pages

ISBN:9781450322430

DOI:10.1145/2493394

General Chairs:
Beth Simon
University of California, San Diego, USA
,
Alison Clear
CPIT, Christchurch, NZ
,
Quintin Cutts
University of Glasgow, UK

Permission to make digital or hard copies of all or part of this work for personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. Copyrights for components of this work owned by others than ACM must be honored. Abstracting with credit is permitted. To copy otherwise, or republish, to post on servers or to redistribute to lists, requires prior specific permission and/or a fee. Request permissions from [email protected]

Publisher

Association for Computing Machinery

New York, NY, United States

Publication History

Published: 12 August 2013

Permissions

Request permissions for this article.

Request Permissions

Check for updates

Author Tags

Qualifiers

Research-article

Conference

ICER '13

Sponsor:

SIGCSE

ICER '13: International Computing Education Research Conference

August 12 - 14, 2013

San California, San Diego, USA

Acceptance Rates

ICER '13 Paper Acceptance Rate 22 of 70 submissions, 31%;

Overall Acceptance Rate 189 of 803 submissions, 24%

Upcoming Conference

ICER 2025

Sponsor:
sigcse

ACM Conference on International Computing Education Research

August 3 - 6, 2025

Charlottesville , VA , USA

Contributors

Other Metrics

View Article Metrics

Bibliometrics & Citations

Bibliometrics

Article Metrics

12
Total Citations
View Citations
411
Total Downloads

Downloads (Last 12 months)6
Downloads (Last 6 weeks)1

Reflects downloads up to 19 Nov 2024

Other Metrics

View Author Metrics

Citations

Cited By

View all

Riese EBälter O(2022)A Qualitative Study of Experienced Course Coordinators’ Perspectives on Assessment in Introductory Programming Courses for Non-CS MajorsACM Transactions on Computing Education10.1145/351713422:4(1-29)Online publication date: 15-Sep-2022
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3517134
Izu C(2020)Using Consistency to Measure CS1 Student’s Comprehension of User-defined Functions2020 IEEE International Conference on Teaching, Assessment, and Learning for Engineering (TALE)10.1109/TALE48869.2020.9368374(1-7)Online publication date: 8-Dec-2020
https://doi.org/10.1109/TALE48869.2020.9368374
Zander CEckerdal AMcCartney RMostrom JSanders KThomas LScharlau BMcDermott RPears ASabin M(2019)Copying Can Be GoodProceedings of the 2019 ACM Conference on Innovation and Technology in Computer Science Education10.1145/3304221.3319783(450-456)Online publication date: 2-Jul-2019
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3304221.3319783
Luxton-Reilly ABecker BCao YMcDermott RMirolo CMühling APetersen ASanders KSimon Whalley JSheard JKorhonen A(2018)Developing Assessments to Determine Mastery of Programming FundamentalsProceedings of the 2017 ITiCSE Conference on Working Group Reports10.1145/3174781.3174784(47-69)Online publication date: 30-Jan-2018
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3174781.3174784
Gaber IKirsh ABarnes TGarcia DHawthorne EPérez-Quiñones M(2018)The Effect of Reporting Known Issues on Students' WorkProceedings of the 49th ACM Technical Symposium on Computer Science Education10.1145/3159450.3159456(74-79)Online publication date: 21-Feb-2018
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3159450.3159456
Thuné MEckerdal A(2018)Analysis of Students’ learning of computer programming in a computer laboratory contextEuropean Journal of Engineering Education10.1080/03043797.2018.1544609(1-18)Online publication date: 13-Nov-2018
https://doi.org/10.1080/03043797.2018.1544609
Bouvier DLovellette EMatta JAlshaigy BBecker BCraig MJackova JMcCartney RSanders KZarb M(2016)Novice Programmers and the Problem Description EffectProceedings of the 2016 ITiCSE Working Group Reports10.1145/3024906.3024912(103-118)Online publication date: 9-Jul-2016
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3024906.3024912
Ahadi AHellas AIhantola PKorhonen APetersen ASheard JMontero C(2016)Replication in computing education researchProceedings of the 16th Koli Calling International Conference on Computing Education Research10.1145/2999541.2999554(2-11)Online publication date: 24-Nov-2016
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/2999541.2999554
Kirsh AGaber I(2016)Satisfaction, Time Investment and Success in Students' Programming ExerciseProceedings of the Programming Experience 2016 (PX/16) Workshop10.1145/2984380.2984382(9-20)Online publication date: 18-Jul-2016
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/2984380.2984382
Falkner KFalkner NSzabo CVivian RClear ACuadros-Vargas ECarter JTupac Y(2016)Applying Validated Pedagogy to MOOCsProceedings of the 2016 ACM Conference on Innovation and Technology in Computer Science Education10.1145/2899415.2899429(326-331)Online publication date: 11-Jul-2016
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/2899415.2899429
Show More Cited By

View Options

Login options

Check if you have access through your login credentials or your institution to get full access on this article.

Cited By

Index Terms

Recommendations

Replicating a Validated CS1 Assessment (Abstract Only)

Meta-cognitive skill training programme for first-year bachelor students using thinking process externalisation environment

Progression Of Computational Thinking Skills In Swedish Compulsory Schools With Block-based Programming