Does language choice influence the effectiveness of online introductory programming courses?

  • Authors:

  • Waleed Farag;Sanwar Ali;Debzani Deb

  • Affiliations:

  • Indiana University of Pennsylvania, Indiana, PA, USA;Indiana University of Pennsylvania, Indiana, PA, USA;Winston-Salem State University, Winston-Salem, NC, USA

  • Venue:
  • Proceedings of the 14th annual ACM SIGITE conference on Information technology education
  • Year:
  • 2013

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Abstract

The growing introduction of online courses and degrees places high emphasis on the need for thorough assessment of these offerings. This paper focuses on researching a reliable answer to whether changing the programming language used in online introductory programming courses from C++ to Java will have an impact on their effectiveness or not. The paper uses four distinct data sets to measure course effectiveness and implements an experimental, in-depth analysis procedure to come up with an answer to the posed research question. The data collected from classes, using C++, constitute the control group while data collected when Java was used constitute the experimental group. The first set uses data collected from students that express their perception of the effectiveness of various online course parameters. The second set directly measures students' achievement of course outcomes and compares the measured levels across the studied groups. The third set compares a number of students' success and interactivity indicators while the last set measures the student satisfaction with the course and the instructor. The obtained results for all studied performance measures asserted that there were no statistically significant differences between the control and experimental groups. Such findings can be deemed significant for IT-programs given the popularity of the studied languages and the fact that the study focused mainly on online offerings which are on the rise.