A cognitive approach to identifying measurable milestones for programming skill acquisition

  • Authors:

  • Jerry Mead;Simon Gray;John Hamer;Richard James;Juha Sorva;Caroline St. Clair;Lynda Thomas

  • Affiliations:

  • Bucknell University, Lewisburg, PA;College of Wooster, Wooster, OH;University of Auckland, Auckland, New Zealand;Rollins College, Winter Park, FL;Helsinki University of Technology, Helsinki, Finland;North Central College, Naperville, IL;University of Wales, Aberystwyth, Wales

  • Venue:
  • ITiCSE-WGR '06 Working group reports on ITiCSE on Innovation and technology in computer science education
  • Year:
  • 2006

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Abstract

Traditional approaches to programming education, as exemplified by the typical CS1/CS2 course sequence, have not taken advantage of the long record of psychological and experimental studies on the development of programming skills. These studies indicate a need for a new curricular strategy for developing programming skills and indicate that a cognitive approach would be a promising starting point. This paper first reviews the literature on studies of programming skills, cognition and learning, then within that context reports on a new formal structure, called an anchor graph, that supports curricular design and facilitates the setting of measurable milestones.