Comprehension strategies in programming
Empirical studies of programmers: second workshop
Mental representations of programs by novices and experts
INTERCHI '93 Proceedings of the INTERCHI '93 conference on Human factors in computing systems
Programming pedagogy—a psychological overview
ACM SIGCSE Bulletin
Queue - Power Management
A multi-national study of reading and tracing skills in novice programmers
Working group reports from ITiCSE on Innovation and technology in computer science education
A study of the difficulties of novice programmers
ITiCSE '05 Proceedings of the 10th annual SIGCSE conference on Innovation and technology in computer science education
Not seeing the forest for the trees: novice programmers and the SOLO taxonomy
Proceedings of the 11th annual SIGCSE conference on Innovation and technology in computer science education
Why complicate things?: introducing programming in high school using Python
ACE '06 Proceedings of the 8th Australasian Conference on Computing Education - Volume 52
ACE '06 Proceedings of the 8th Australasian Conference on Computing Education - Volume 52
Collaborative learning: towards a solution for novice programmers
ACE '08 Proceedings of the tenth conference on Australasian computing education - Volume 78
Engaging students in programming
Proceedings of the Twelfth Australasian Conference on Computing Education - Volume 103
A people-first approach to programming
ACE '09 Proceedings of the Eleventh Australasian Conference on Computing Education - Volume 95
Observations from semi-automatic testing of program codes in the high school student maturity exam
Proceedings of the 10th Koli Calling International Conference on Computing Education Research
An introduction to program comprehension for computer science educators
Proceedings of the 2010 ITiCSE working group reports
Semi-automatic testing of program codes in the high school student maturity exam
Proceedings of the 12th International Conference on Computer Systems and Technologies
Koli Calling comes of age: an analysis
Koli Calling '07 Proceedings of the Seventh Baltic Sea Conference on Computing Education Research - Volume 88
Hi-index | 0.00 |
This paper introduces progress reports and describes how these can be used as a tool to evaluate student learning and understanding during programming courses. A progress report includes a short piece of program code (on paper), covering topics recently introduced in the course, and four questions. The two first questions are of a "trace and explain" type, asking the students to describe the functionality of the program using their own words - both line by line and as a whole. The two other questions aim at gaining insight into the students' own opinions of their learning, as they are asked to write down what they think they have learned so far in the course and what they have experienced as most difficult. Results from using progress reports in an introductory programming course at secondary level are presented. The responses to the "trace and explain" questions were categorized based on the level of overall understanding manifested. We also analyzed students' understanding of individual programming concepts, both based on their code explanations and on their own opinions on what they had experienced as difficult. Our initial experience from using the progress reports is positive, as we feel that they provide valuable information during the course, which most likely would remain uncovered otherwise.