ISCAP Proceedings - 2024

Baltimore, MD - November 2024



ISCAP Proceedings: Abstract Presentation


Student Grade Expectancy vs Reality in Introductory Programming Course: A Pilot Study


Deepak Dawar
Miami University

Abstract
Learning computer programming is typically difficult for newcomers. Demotivation and learned helplessness have received much attention. Besides the subject's intricacy, several factors have been identified and are associated with poor student achievement, poor student confidence being a major determinant. This work has two objectives: 1) to continuously measure student's own expectation of a certain grade in the programming course vs. the actual grade they receive at the end of the course, 2) is it possible to improve the average grade of the whole group by identifying struggling students and applying interventions to those specific students? This paper presents a two-semester wherein students were asked to take a survey about their expected grade every two weeks, i.e., six data points during a semester. The first semester (control group) was taught using conventional teaching methods that the author has employed over the years method, and the confidence data was recorded for every participating student. No specific interventional methods were employed to improve the control group's performance. The data collected from the control group showed a lot of variation as the semester progressed, with some students getting more confident of getting a better grade and some less confident of securing their original expected grade. The same process is then followed in the next semester with the experimental group, but with a critical difference. As soon as a student indicates less confidence in securing their original grade, an intervention is applied to the situation. Intervention here is defined as a strategy that has shown promise in previous classes in improving student grades both in literature and the author's experience teaching programming courses. There is a total of seven strategies, including pair programming, an assignment a day(AAAD), etc. One or more strategies are then chosen based on the learning style of the struggling student. The learning style data is also collected during the survey. Three sets of data are then analyzed with the ANOVA test. In the first set, students' expected grade is compared with the actual grade achieved in the control group. In the second set, the same procedure is followed within the experimental group. The third set compares the final grades of the control and the experimental groups to see if there is a significant difference in the outcomes once the interventions are applied to help the less confident students. This study is a work in progress; the results will take another semester to obtain and process.