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No Tests Required: Comparing Traditional and Dynamic Predictors of Programming Success

Watson, Christopher; Li, Frederick W.B.; Godwin, Jamie L.

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Authors

Christopher Watson

Jamie L. Godwin



Contributors

J. D. Dougherty
Editor

Kris Nagel
Editor

Adrienne Decker
Editor

Kurt Eiselt
Editor

Abstract

Research over the past fifty years into predictors of programming performance has yielded little improvement in the identification of at-risk students. This is possibly because research to date is based upon using static tests, which fail to reflect changes in a student's learning progress over time. In this paper, the effectiveness of 38 traditional predictors of programming performance are compared to 12 new data-driven predictors, that are based upon analyzing directly logged data, describing the programming behavior of students. Whilst few strong correlations were found between the traditional predictors and performance, an abundance of strong significant correlations based upon programming behavior were found. A model based upon two of these metrics (Watwin score and percentage of lab time spent resolving errors) could explain 56.3% of the variance in coursework results. The implication of this study is that a student's programming behavior is one of the strongest indicators of their performance, and future work should continue to explore such predictors in different teaching contexts.

Citation

Watson, C., Li, F. W., & Godwin, J. L. (2014). No Tests Required: Comparing Traditional and Dynamic Predictors of Programming Success. In J. . D. Dougherty, K. Nagel, A. Decker, & K. Eiselt (Eds.), Proceedings of the 45th ACM Technical Symposium on Computer Science Education (469-474). https://doi.org/10.1145/2538862.2538930

Conference Name 45th ACM Technical Symposium on Computer Science Education (SIGCSE '14)
Conference Location Atlanta GA
Acceptance Date Nov 30, 2014
Publication Date Jan 1, 2014
Deposit Date Sep 6, 2014
Publicly Available Date Jul 13, 2016
Publisher Association for Computing Machinery (ACM)
Pages 469-474
Book Title Proceedings of the 45th ACM Technical Symposium on Computer Science Education.
DOI https://doi.org/10.1145/2538862.2538930
Public URL https://durham-repository.worktribe.com/output/1155073
Publisher URL http://doi.acm.org/10.1145/2538862.2538930

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Copyright Statement
© 2014 ACM. This is the author's version of the work. It is posted here by permission of ACM for your personal use. Not for redistribution. The definitive version was published in Proceedings of the 45th ACM Technical Symposium on Computer Science Education, 2014, http://doi.acm.org/10.1145/2538862.2538930





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