Practicing the Process of Programming

Ramapo College Of New Jersey, Mahwah NJ

Investigators

Abstract

The low numbers of computer science graduates is a national concern. One of the frequently cited reasons for leaving computer science is students' difficulties with programming. The goal of this project is to build a software tutor that provides feedback designed to guide students through the process of developing a sequence of steps to solve a given problem, selecting the programming language features appropriate for each step, and then writing code using those features. Students will learn to solve 40 different problems of varying complexity using the software tutor. The software tutor is expected to help reduce the number of students, especially women, who typically drop out of programming courses and increase the number of graduates who eventually go on to careers in Information Technology. This research and development project will consist of the following activities: 1) Creation of practice software that provides formative feedback to help students learn algorithm formulation and program design by solving problems. In addition, students will learn to write code for the problems, which will cover selection, loops, and functions in both Java and C++. 2) Assessment of student learning throughout the course using a formative evaluation of the pedagogic modules and feedback from the practice software. Summative evaluation will examine the impact of the software on the success of students in an introductory Computer Science course, measured in terms of grades, retention, and specifically, the differential impact of the software on women in the introductory programming course. 3) Dissemination of the results of the project through research conferences and journals and by sharing the practice software among educators so it can be adopted and used in other introductory Computer Science courses.