Success in Introductory Programming: What Works?
August 5, 2013 at 1:40 am 16 comments
Leo Porter, Charlie McDowell, Beth Simon, and I collaborated on a paper on how to make introductory programming work, now available in CACM. It’s a shorter, more accessible version of Leo and Beth’s best-paper-award winning SIGCSE 2013 paper, with history and kibitzing from Charlie and me :
Many Communications readers have been in faculty meetings where we have reviewed and bemoaned statistics about how bad attrition is in our introductory programming courses for computer science majors (CS1). Failure rates of 30%–50% are not uncommon worldwide. There are usually as many suggestions for how to improve the course as there are faculty in the meeting. But do we know anything that really works?
We do, and we have research evidence to back it up. Pair programming, peer instruction, and media computation are three approaches to reforming CS1 that have shown positive, measurable impacts. Each of them is successful separately at improving retention or helping students learn, and combined, they have a dramatic effect.
via Success in Introductory Programming: What Works? | August 2013 | Communications of the ACM.
Entry filed under: Uncategorized. Tags: computing education research, CS1, Media Computation, pair programming, peer instruction.
Computing Ed Research - Guzdial's Take 
1.
Franklin Chen | August 5, 2013 at 9:04 am
Unfortunately, access requires ACM account.
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Mark Guzdial | August 5, 2013 at 10:35 am
I have posted a version that I’ll remove when the article hits the digital library and I can load it into my ACM Authorizer page.
3.
Joe McCarthy | August 25, 2013 at 1:24 pm
It appears to be in the ACM Digital Library now: http://dl.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=2492020
I don’t see it yet in your ACM Authorizer list:
4.
Mark Guzdial | August 25, 2013 at 3:02 pm
The page https://computinged.wordpress.com/guzdial-papers/ doesn’t update directly — I copy-paste it from ACM. While it’s in the ACM DL, it’s not yet in my Authorizer list. I’ll check it occasionally to update it. Thanks, Joe.
5.
Alfred Thompson | August 7, 2013 at 5:12 pm
Just to sort of thing that helps make my ACM membership worth the money. 🙂
6.
Anna | February 21, 2014 at 7:07 pm
será posible que me regales el articulo?
7.
The ACM ‘paywall,’ computing education research, and open access | Computing Education Blog | August 8, 2013 at 2:00 am
[…] been receiving more complaints lately when I reference papers “behind a paywall.” After I linked to the article that Leo Porter, Beth Simon, Charlie McDowell, and I wrote about successful practices in CS1, someone tweeted that we were “whores” by allowing […]
8. Coding for Kids? Try Starting From Scratch | August 12, 2013 at 8:00 am
[…] watching TV) is that it’s not only frustrating working through code. It feels kind of lonely too. And the research backs me up here. Pair programming – working side by side with someone – makes for more positive […]
9.
hclemuseum | August 16, 2013 at 3:41 pm
Reblogged this on HCLE Virtual Museum and commented:
Early users had no choice. They had to learn about hardware and software and programming. Few do that now. Not even enough are learning programming, or even the skills required to learn programming. This is a discussion of the problem, and solutions.
10.
We measure educational productivity wrong: Not numbers but learning | Computing Education Blog | September 7, 2013 at 1:22 am
[…] and retention. We absolutely have teaching methods, well-supported with research, that lead to better learning and more retention — we can get students to complete more classes with better understanding. In the end, […]
11.
Education Research Questions around Live Coding: Vygotskian and Non-Constructionist | Computing Education Blog | September 30, 2013 at 5:40 am
[…] coding is a collaborative practice, but very different from pair programming. Everybody codes, and everybody pays attention to what the others are doing. How does the […]
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[…] – Twitter Library Arduino Ethernet Board: Arduino Twitter Library Squishy Circuits Kits Success in Introductory Programming: What Works? | Computing Education Blog One reason we have so much engineering and so little computer science taught at US high schools. | […]
13.
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[…] days, the “hold” part of Dewey’s challenge mentioned below — consider the UCSD results and the MediaComp results. But how do we “catch” attention? We are particularly bad […]
14.
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[…] to attracting girls and underrepresented minorities. And this critical element is pretty simple: peer collaboration. Kids are much more likely to succeed at programming if they do it with their […]
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[…] to attracting girls and underrepresented minorities. And this critical element is pretty simple: peer collaboration. Kids are much more likely to succeed at programming if they do it with their […]
16.
Growing Computing Education Research to Critical Mass at UNO and UCSD | Computing Education Blog | June 3, 2016 at 7:05 am
[…] – San Diego: Leo Porter (winner of many SIGCSE and ICER best paper awards, including work described in this post) is in CS, Scott Klemmer (who gave the keynote at ICER 2012) is in the Design Lab, and Beth Simon […]