Not seeing the forest for the trees: Novice programmers and the SOLO taxonomy

Lister, R; Simon, B; Thompson, E; Whalley, JL; Prasad, C

Not seeing the forest for the trees: Novice programmers and the SOLO taxonomy

Lister, R

Simon, B Thompson, E Whalley, JL Prasad, C

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Publication Type:: Journal Article
Citation:: ITiCSE06 - Proceedings of the 11th Annual SIGCSE Conference on Innovation and Technology in Computer Science Education, 2006, 2006 pp. 118 - 122
Issue Date:: 2006-09-29

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Field	Value	Language
dc.contributor.author	Lister, R https://orcid.org/0000-0001-5780-0445	en_US
dc.contributor.author	Simon, B	en_US
dc.contributor.author	Thompson, E	en_US
dc.contributor.author	Whalley, JL	en_US
dc.contributor.author	Prasad, C	en_US
dc.date.issued	2006-09-29	en_US
dc.identifier.citation	ITiCSE06 - Proceedings of the 11th Annual SIGCSE Conference on Innovation and Technology in Computer Science Education, 2006, 2006 pp. 118 - 122	en_US
dc.identifier.isbn	9781595930552	en_US
dc.identifier.uri	http://hdl.handle.net/10453/4043
dc.description.abstract	This paper reports on the authors use of the SOLO taxonomy to describe differences in the way students and educators solve small code reading exercises. SOLO is a general educational taxonomy, and has not previously been applied to the study of how novice programmers manifest their understanding of code. Data was collected in the form of written and think-aloud responses from students (novices) and educators (experts), using exam questions. During analysis, the responses were mapped to the different levels of the SOLO taxonomy. From think-aloud responses, the authors found that educators tended to manifest a SOLO relational response on small reading problems, whereas students tended to manifest a multistructural response. These results are consistent with the literature on the psychology of programming, but the work in this paper extends on these findings by analyzing the design of exam questions. Copyright 2006 ACM.	en_US
dc.relation.ispartof	ITiCSE06 - Proceedings of the 11th Annual SIGCSE Conference on Innovation and Technology in Computer Science Education	en_US
dc.subject.classification	Education	en_US
dc.title	Not seeing the forest for the trees: Novice programmers and the SOLO taxonomy	en_US
dc.type	Journal Article
utslib.citation.volume	2006	en_US
utslib.for	089999 Information and Computing Sciences not elsewhere classified	en_US
pubs.embargo.period	Not known	en_US
pubs.organisational-group	/University of Technology Sydney
pubs.organisational-group	/University of Technology Sydney/Faculty of Engineering and Information Technology
pubs.organisational-group	/University of Technology Sydney/Faculty of Engineering and Information Technology/School of Computer Science
pubs.organisational-group	/University of Technology Sydney/Strength - HCTD - Human Centred Technology Design
utslib.copyright.status	open_access
pubs.publication-status	Published	en_US
pubs.volume	2006	en_US

Abstract:

This paper reports on the authors use of the SOLO taxonomy to describe differences in the way students and educators solve small code reading exercises. SOLO is a general educational taxonomy, and has not previously been applied to the study of how novice programmers manifest their understanding of code. Data was collected in the form of written and think-aloud responses from students (novices) and educators (experts), using exam questions. During analysis, the responses were mapped to the different levels of the SOLO taxonomy. From think-aloud responses, the authors found that educators tended to manifest a SOLO relational response on small reading problems, whereas students tended to manifest a multistructural response. These results are consistent with the literature on the psychology of programming, but the work in this paper extends on these findings by analyzing the design of exam questions. Copyright 2006 ACM.

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