Assignment and sequence: why some students can't recognise a simple swap

Authors:
Simon
Affiliations:
University of Newcastle, Australia
Venue:
Proceedings of the 11th Koli Calling International Conference on Computing Education Research
Year:
2011

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Abstract

In the current cycle of the continuing drive to discover why some students have such difficulty learning to program, the goalposts have been moving ever closer to the very fundamentals. On the basis of some very simple multiple-choice questions asked in tests in introductory and subsequent programming courses, it is proposed that many students have not grasped the concept of sequence in programming, the concept that a group of statements in a procedural programming language will be executed in the order in which they appear. This problem was discussed in the programming education literature as long as 25 years ago, but it seems that little has changed in that time. The consequences of the preliminary finding are discussed, and further work is proposed to confirm it or otherwise.