ExploreCSEd


Rebecca Mancy Rebecca.Mancy @ educ.gla.ac.uk +44 7967 730 987	English
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ExploreCSeD: Exploring skills and difficulties in programming education

The ExploreCSEd project aims to discover more about how students learn to program, both in terms of the difficulties of learning this subject, and the specific cognitive skills involved. In particular, teachers of programming often express considerable concern about the high rates of student failure and attrition that are prevalent in this subject. Another topic of much deliberation is choice of programming language, particularly at introductory level: many opposing views exist and reports of departmental "language wars" are common. We propose that both of these issues would benefit from increased understanding of the skills involved in learning to program, and the difficulties experienced by our students as they attempt this task. Simultaneously, the project aims to promote high quality research, centred on the learner and breaking away from the idiosyncrasies of specific teaching situations and anecdotal evidence, thus allowing us to discover general principles of learning that can be widely applied in teaching.

As part of our own research, we have designed two instruments to investigate issues relating to skills and difficulties in programming education: a short questionnaire (adapted from an existing tool used extensively in science education research) to identify areas of conceptual difficulty in programming courses and a test of several specific cognitive characteristics that we believe are central to learning to program.

In order to increase participation in the project, and hence widen its reach, we will host working groups and panel sessions at UK conferences and workshops in areas concerned with teaching programming, notably computer science, mathematics and engineering education. These sessions will be used to explain the project to attendees, recruiting participants who will apply the instruments in their home institutions.

The data from the different institutions will be collated and analysed in collaboration with the project leaders, who will disseminate the results via articles in conferences and journals. We expect that the study will benefit researchers, educators and students.

This project is being run conjointly with:
Marjahan Begum, School of Computer Science and Information Technology, University of Nottingham
Ioanna Stamouli, Computer Science Department, Trinity College, Dublin [email]

If you are interested in becoming involved with this project, please do not hesitate to contact us.