TY - GEN
T1 - What novice programmers don't know
AU - Lewandowski, Gary
AU - Gutschow, Alicia
AU - McCartney, Robert
AU - Sanders, Kate
AU - Shinners-Kennedy, Dermot
PY - 2005
Y1 - 2005
N2 - 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.
AB - 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.
KW - Abstraction
KW - Card Sorts
KW - Course Performance
KW - CS1
KW - CS2
KW - Programming Concepts
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=33745197968&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1145/1089786.1089787
DO - 10.1145/1089786.1089787
M3 - Conference contribution
AN - SCOPUS:33745197968
SN - 1595930434
SN - 9781595930439
T3 - Proceedings of the 1st International Computing Education Research Workshop, ICER 2005
SP - 1
EP - 12
BT - Proceedings of the 1st International Computing Education Research Workshop, ICER 2005
T2 - 1st International Computing Education Research Workshop, ICER 2005
Y2 - 1 October 2005 through 2 October 2005
ER -