Investigations of Beginners in Programming Course Based on Learning Strategies and Gradual Level Test, and Development of Support-Rules

Abstract

Recently beginners’ programming courses for university freshmen have high number of dropout and low achievers. To find the cause of this problem, this study investigated into students in beginners’ programming course based on learning strategies and programming test with gradual level. These investigations have two research questions: 1) What kind of learning strategies students have, which affect their grade and learning performance? 2) What type of questions in the programming test students cannot answer, and in particular the differences in the unanswered questions that exist among four student groups with the learning levels. The result shows the evident differences about the learning strategies and the programming test among the four student groups with the learning levels. Additionally this study did discriminant analysis to classify these four groups and shows equations that can classify more than 85% of all students correctly. We finally give some learning support-rules for the programming course.