The impact of providing project choices in CS1

Authors:
Jeffrey A. Stone;Elinor M. Madigan
Affiliations:
Pennsylvania State University, Schuylkill Haven, Pennsylvania;Pennsylvania State University, Schuylkill Haven, Pennsylvania
Venue:
ACM SIGCSE Bulletin
Year:
2008

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Abstract

CS educators are constantly faced with the challenge of engaging students who have neither the interest nor skill level necessary to succeed in an introductory course. One potential solution is to allow students to choose their projects from a set of comparable alternatives, each of which represents a different problem domain. This paper reports on the results of a two-year study designed to measure the impact of project choice on student outcomes in a CS1-style course for non-majors. The results suggest that the gender plays a major role in both the projects chosen and student outcomes.