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Evidence for Programming Strategies in University Coding Exercises

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Lifelong Technology-Enhanced Learning (EC-TEL 2018)

Part of the book series: Lecture Notes in Computer Science ((LNISA,volume 11082))

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Abstract

Success in coding exercises is deeply related to the strategy employed by the students to solve coding tasks. In this contribution, we analyze the programming assignments of 600 students from an introductory university course in object-oriented programming. The students were provided unit tests for the assessment of their code, and their editing and testing actions were recorded using an Eclipse plug-in. The primary motivation for this study is to discover the programming strategies used by students for coding exercises with different difficulty levels, and find out if any relation exists between these strategies and the success in solving the coding tasks. More insights into this process will enable educators to provide future students timely, appropriate and constructive feedback on their coding process. Thus, to predict success in the coding exercises, we used indicators from students’ testing behaviour reflecting the time and effort differences between two successive unit test runs. The results show a clear difference in the strategies employed by students within different success levels. The results also highlight ways of providing actionable feedback to the students in a timely and appropriate manner.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Norwegian University of Science and Technology, Trondheim, Norway

    Kshitij Sharma, Katerina Mangaroska, Halvard Trætteberg, Serena Lee-Cultura & Michail Giannakos

Authors
  1. Kshitij Sharma
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  2. Katerina Mangaroska
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  3. Halvard Trætteberg
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  4. Serena Lee-Cultura
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  5. Michail Giannakos
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Kshitij Sharma .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. Graz University of Technology, Graz, Austria

    Viktoria Pammer-Schindler

  2. Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile, Providencia, Santiago de Chile, Chile

    Mar Pérez-Sanagustín

  3. DIPF | Leibniz Institute for Research and Information in Education, Frankfurt, Germany

    Hendrik Drachsler

  4. RayCom BV, Utrecht, Utrecht, The Netherlands

    Raymond Elferink

  5. Open University Netherlands, Heerlen, The Netherlands

    Maren Scheffel

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Sharma, K., Mangaroska, K., Trætteberg, H., Lee-Cultura, S., Giannakos, M. (2018). Evidence for Programming Strategies in University Coding Exercises. In: Pammer-Schindler, V., Pérez-Sanagustín, M., Drachsler, H., Elferink, R., Scheffel, M. (eds) Lifelong Technology-Enhanced Learning. EC-TEL 2018. Lecture Notes in Computer Science(), vol 11082. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-98572-5_25

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-98572-5_25

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  • Publisher Name: Springer, Cham

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-319-98571-8

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-319-98572-5

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