What novice programmers don't know

Gary Lewandowski, Alicia Gutschow, Robert McCartney, Kate Sanders, Dermot Shinners-Kennedy

Research output: Chapter in Book/Report/Conference proceedingConference contributionpeer-review

Abstract

Novice programmer knowledge contains a mixture of well-formed, 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.

Original languageEnglish
Title of host publicationProceedings of the 1st International Computing Education Research Workshop, ICER 2005
Pages1-12
Number of pages12
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 2005
Event1st International Computing Education Research Workshop, ICER 2005 - Seattle, WA, United States
Duration: 1 Oct 20052 Oct 2005

Publication series

NameProceedings of the 1st International Computing Education Research Workshop, ICER 2005

Conference

Conference1st International Computing Education Research Workshop, ICER 2005
Country/TerritoryUnited States
CitySeattle, WA
Period1/10/052/10/05

Keywords

  • Abstraction
  • Card Sorts
  • Course Performance
  • CS1
  • CS2
  • Programming Concepts

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