Undergraduate Students' Experiences in Programming: Difficulties and Obstacles

Abstract

Programming courses become prominent as one of the courses in which undergraduate students are unsuccessful especially in departments which offer computer education. Students often state that these courses are quite difficult compared to other courses. Therefore, a qualitative phenomenological approach was used to reveal the reasons of the failures of the undergraduate students in programming courses and to examine the difficulties they confronted with programming. In this scope, the laboratory practices of the Internet Programming course were observed in fall term of the 2013-2014 academic year in a university at central Anatolia. Interviews were made with 12 undergraduate students taking this course. Finally, the difficulties students experienced in the programming were determined as programming knowledge, programming skills, understanding semantics of the program, and debugging. Students emphasized that the biggest causes of failure in programming languages are lack of practice, not using algorithms and lack of knowledge. In addition, it was seen that the students who had high programming experience possess higher programming success and self-efficacy related to programming.Keywords: Programming; programming language; programming experience. ÖzProgramlama dersleri, özellikle bilgisayar eğitimi veren bölümlerde üniversite öğrencilerinin en başarısız olduğu derslerden biri olarak öne çıkmaktadır. Öğrenciler bu dersleri diğer derslere oranla oldukça zor bulduklarını ifade etmektedirler. Bu doğrultuda, üniversite öğrencilerinin programlama derslerindeki başarısızlıklarının nedenlerini ortaya koymak ve programlama sürecinde yaşadıkları zorlukları incelemek amacıyla nitel araştırma yöntemlerinden biri olan fenomenoloji yaklaşımı kullanılmıştır. Bu kapsamda, 2013-2014 yılı güz döneminde Türkiye'de bir devlet üniversitesinde İnternet Tabanlı Programlama dersinin laboratuvar etkinlikleri gözlemlenmiş ve bu derse devam eden 12 öğrenci ile görüşme yapılmıştır. Sonuç olarak, öğrencilerin programlama sürecinde yaşadıkları zorluklar programlama bilgisi, programlama becerisi, programın mantığını kavrama ve hata ayıklama olarak belirlenmiştir. Öğrenciler, programlamadaki başarısızlıklarının en büyük nedenlerini pratik eksikliği, algoritma oluşturmama ve bilgi eksikliği olduğunu vurgulamışlardır. Ek olarak, programlama deneyimi yüksek olan öğrencilerin programlama başarılarının ve programlamaya ilişkin öz yeterlilik algılarının yüksek olduğu görülmüştür.Anahtar Sözcükler: Programlama; programlama dili; programlama deneyimi.

ICT Teachers’ Acceptance of “Scratch” as Algorithm Visualization Software

“…The results indicated that there is no significant difference between their acceptance scores in terms of gender, programming background, and the high school type they graduated from and there is also no significant correlation between programming experience and their acceptance. These results mean that students have acceptance of Scratch regardless of gender and programming experience, although it was reported in the literature that the challenge of learning programming varies depending on gender (Howland & Good, 2015;Yurdugül & Aşkar, 2013) and experience (Lau & Yuen, 2011;Özmen & Altun, 2014). For this reason, the non-significancy has important implications for programming instruction at the university level, since this could be considered an advantage of Scratch for its widespread adoption by all learners, particularly novice programmers.…”

“…They believe that Scratch is useful for learning and teaching programming because it facilitates the algorithm creation process in an easier and more concrete manner. Creating algorithms for problems, lack of practice and knowledge are reported by Özmen and Altun (2014) as the major problems in learning programming. Additionally, the abstract nature of programming and lack of practical and concrete learning contexts are the reasons for difficulty, for especially novice learners (Lahtinen, Ala-mutka, & Järvinen, 2005).…”

“…abstract concepts, application of what is learnt, and lack of practical and concrete learning situations (Lahtinen, Ala-Mutka, & Jarvinen, 2005). In a recently conducted study with the participation of students in a computer-related discipline, these challenges were reported as "programming knowledge, programming skills, understanding semantics of the program, and debugging" (Özmen & Altun, 2014). This study also underlines that lack of practice and lack of algorithm usage, along with lack of knowledge, are major problems causing student failure in programming courses.…”

Analyzing the effects of adapted flipped classroom approach on computer programming success, attitude toward programming, and programming self‐efficacy

“…They used FCA for the programming course. The study results are rendered more important by the several studies [26,32,37,38] which concluded that the failure in programming stems from lack of time and practice because the students do not spend time on programming except when they are in the class. Thanks to this implementation, the students carried out the programming tasks outside the classroom and enriched their programming experiences via coding practices.…”

Looking at Algorithm Visualization through the Eyes of Pre-service ICT Teachers

“…Some of the major problems identified for college students are abstract concepts, lack of understanding of the larger entities, lack of applications, and lack of practical and concrete learning situations [22]. A recently conducted study categorized the problems a novice learner faces as "programming knowledge (56%), programming skills (17%), understanding semantics (13%), and debugging (13%)" [29]. Regarding these problems, computer science educators and instructional technologists have been studying technological and pedagogical ways to make programming instruction easier and more effective.…”