Document Type

Conference Proceeding

Publication Date

8-2019

Abstract

is work extends previous research on subgoal labeled instructions by examining their effect across a semester-long, Java-based CS1 course. Across four quizzes, students were asked to explain in plain English the process that they would use to solve a programming problem. In this mixed methods study, we used the SOLO taxonomy to categorize student responses about problem-solving processes and compare students who learned with subgoal labels to those who did not. e use of the SOLO taxonomy classification allows us to look deeper than the mere correctness of answers to focus on the quality of the answers produced in terms of completeness of relevant concepts and explanation of relationships among concepts. Students who learned with subgoals produced higher-rated answers in terms of complexity and quality on three of four quizzes. Also, they were three times more likely to discuss issues of data type on a question about assignments and expressions than students who did not learn with subgoal labeling. is suggests that the use of subgoal labeling enabled students to gain a deeper and more complex understanding of the material presented in the course.

Comments

Originally published in Proceedings of the Fieenth Annual Conference on International Computing Education Research. ACM, New York, NY, USA.

(c) The Authors.

DOI

https://doi.org/10.1145/3291279.3339405

Creative Commons License

Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License

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