Computer science students' causal attributions for successful and unsuccessful outcomes in programming assignments

Abstract

While some students excel in introductory programming courses, others find the course to be significantly challenging and demanding. The way that students reason about the factors that contribute to success or failure may affect their self-efficacy, motivation, future success and whether or not they persist in Computer Science (CS). What factors do students' perceive to cause successful or unsuccessful learning outcomes in first-year programming assignments? Such findings can assist us in identifying causal reasoning that may be detrimental to future success and persistence. We use Attribution Theory (AT) as a framework to explore the "causal attributions" that students apply to explain their causes for success or failure in introductory programming assignments, alluded to in their reflective essays about performance in a course. Our research demonstrates that reflective essays, integrated into learning tasks, can be one effective and efficient way to extract students' casual attributions.Our results indicate that the students raised a number of causal attributions in their essays that were specific to the CS-context and were attributed to both internal and external causes. We highlight problematic areas of casual reasoning and a need to correct misleading reasoning to ensure CS students understand their control over the success of their future programming assignments. This research offers opportunities for future research to develop activities that may encourage students to correctly identify causes of performance outcomes in programming assignments and to determine if such interventions can prevent students from leaving CS.

Can everybody learn to code?

“…This is similar to a study of students' self-reflection on their learning process where many voluntarily attributed causes of success and failure to nondiscipline specific strategies such as time management, effort and planning [41]. However, discipline-specific strategies were also identified by students as causes for success or failure, such as the adoption (or lack of) design strategies, pre-assessment of programming tasks and understanding of concepts.…”

“…The literature so far identifies that students reported a range of factors that contribute to success and failure in learning to program, such as effort, ability, time management, planning and task difficulty [12,13,29,41]. These can be referred to as causal attributions [42,43] and can be sorted into factors pertaining to the causal locus (internal or external), which are factors associated with the self (e.g.…”

“…In their survey, programming students who had a fixed mindset for programming aptitude had an incremental view of intelligence, suggesting that students may not associate programming aptitude with intelligence and that aptitude may have a greater influence over programming practice [35]. We have seen this as in studies that apply attribution theory perspectives where ability is commonly a trait students express as the reason they enrol in computer science [21] or as a factor contributing toward performance [14,41]. Although based on a single context and two classes, a concerning finding was that over the course of a semester, while programming students' perception of intelligence had not changed, nearly one third of respondents came to believe more strongly that programming aptitude was a fixed trait [35].…”

A review on process-oriented approaches for analyzing novice solutions to programming problems

“…This is evident in the increasing failure and dropout rates among novice programmers in their introductory programming courses (Bennedsen and Caspersen 2007;Yadin 2011;Watson and Li 2014;Horton and Craig 2015). Several studies had been conducted to pinpoint what could have contributed to these high attrition rates (Kori et al 2015;Simon et al 2006;Kinnunen and Malmi 2006;Gomes and Mendes 2007;Biggers et al 2008;Moström 2011;Mhashi and Alakeel 2013;Simon et al 2013;Adu-Manusarpong et al 2013;Vivian et al 2013), and one of the prominent reasons is the lack of problem-solving skills (Carbone et al 2009;Falkner and Falkner 2012). Results also showed that time management strategies, effort, and lack of design and programming ability were among the primary reasons for their struggles in programming (Vivian et al 2013).…”

The Factors Enhance the Strength of Students’ Computer Self-efficacy in a Computer Classroom

“…Computer self-efficacy (CSE) plays an important role in students' perceptions of their abilities to accomplish computer tasks and perform successfully in work and learning environments [3], [4]. Students with low SE may difficult to succeed in the computer course [5], [6]. To promote CSE of students, the study of Ref.…”