Novice mistakes: are the folk wisdoms correct?
Communications of the ACM
Programming pedagogy—a psychological overview
ACM SIGCSE Bulletin
Introductory programming, criterion-referencing, and bloom
SIGCSE '03 Proceedings of the 34th SIGCSE technical symposium on Computer science education
The neglected battle fields of syntax errors
ACE '03 Proceedings of the fifth Australasian conference on Computing education - Volume 20
"But it looks right!": the bugs students don't see
Proceedings of the 35th SIGCSE technical symposium on Computer science education
This course has a Bloom Rating of 3.9
ACE '04 Proceedings of the Sixth Australasian Conference on Computing Education - Volume 30
ACE '05 Proceedings of the 7th Australasian conference on Computing education - Volume 42
ACE '06 Proceedings of the 8th Australasian Conference on Computing Education - Volume 52
Transforming learning of programming: a mentoring project
ACE '08 Proceedings of the tenth conference on Australasian computing education - Volume 78
A taxonomic study of novice programming summative assessment
ACE '09 Proceedings of the Eleventh Australasian Conference on Computing Education - Volume 95
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Learning to program is known to be problematic for a significant number of students as evidenced by high failure rates reported by Computer Science schools. Students either fail to comprehend a range of fundamental programming concepts or carry misunderstandings and misconceptions about programming well into the semester, leading to summative assessment failures. Multiple choice questions in summative assessments are a popular choice of instrument to test novice learners of programming, yet during their formative stages such questions are typically used in the traditional "practice" or "rote learning" contexts, leaving gaps in understanding of programming concepts. In this paper we report the use of multiple choice exercises in a guided learning approach, within the learning context of novice programmers who are typically first-time university students of a Computer Science program. In addition to the use of multiple choice questions for practice, we propose a guided learning tool to identify cognitive lapses in learning programming. We report results of a pilot study that uses a partially-completed guided learning tool, to prevent students at the outset from falling into the cognitive traps that often ensnare the novice programmer.