Skip to main content
Kent Academic Repository

Predictors of success in a first programming course

Simon and Fincher, Sally and Robins, Anthony and Baker, Bob and Box, Ilona and Cutts, Quintin and de Raadt, Michael and Haden, Patricia and Hamer, John and Hamilton, Margaret and Lister, Raymond and Petre, Marian and Sutton, Ken and Tolhurst, Denise and Tutty, Jodi (2006) Predictors of success in a first programming course. In: Tolhurst, Denise and Mann, Samuel, eds. ACE '06 Proceedings of the 8th Australasian Conference on Computing Education. ACM International Conference Proceeding Series . Australian Computing Society Inc., Darlinghurst, pp. 189-197. ISBN 1-920682-34-1. (The full text of this publication is not currently available from this repository. You may be able to access a copy if URLs are provided) (KAR id:14509)

The full text of this publication is not currently available from this repository. You may be able to access a copy if URLs are provided.

Abstract

This paper describes a multi-national, multiinstitutional study that investigated introductory programming courses. Student participants were drawn from eleven institutions, mainly in Australasia, during the academic year of 2004. A number of diagnostic tasks were used to explore cognitive, behavioural, and attitudinal factors such as spatial visualisation and reasoning, the ability to articulate strategies for commonplace search and design tasks, and attitudes to studying. The results indicate that a deep approach to learning was positively correlated with mark for the course, while a surface approach was negatively correlated; spatial visualisation skills are correlated with success; a progression of map drawing styles identified in the literature has a significant correlation with marks; and increasing measures of richness of articulation of a search strategy are also associated with higher marks. Finally, a qualitative analysis of short interviews identified the qualities that students themselves regarded as important to success in programming.

Item Type: Book section
Subjects: Q Science > QA Mathematics (inc Computing science) > QA 76 Software, computer programming,
Divisions: Divisions > Division of Computing, Engineering and Mathematical Sciences > School of Computing
Depositing User: Mark Wheadon
Date Deposited: 24 Nov 2008 18:04 UTC
Last Modified: 16 Nov 2021 09:52 UTC
Resource URI: https://kar.kent.ac.uk/id/eprint/14509 (The current URI for this page, for reference purposes)

University of Kent Author Information

  • Depositors only (login required):

Total unique views for this document in KAR since July 2020. For more details click on the image.