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Teaching programming and problem solving to CS2 students using think-alouds

Published: 04 March 2009 Publication History

Abstract

Many studies have shown that students often face difficulty in applying programming concepts to design a program that solves a given task. To impart better problem solving skills a number of pedagogical approaches have been presented in the literature. However, most of these approaches provide a general strategy of problem solving. But in reality problem solving is a skill that is developed with experience over a period of time. In this paper, we present a pedagogical approach to teach problem solving using think-alouds. In a think-aloud problem solving approach students learn the skill of problem solving by closely observing an 'experienced programmer. We used this approach in a CS2 class and our evaluation results show that think-aloud problem solving is an extremely effective pedagogical technique, particularly for female students.

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cover image ACM Conferences
SIGCSE '09: Proceedings of the 40th ACM technical symposium on Computer science education
March 2009
612 pages
ISBN:9781605581835
DOI:10.1145/1508865
Permission to make digital or hard copies of all or part of this work for personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. Copyrights for components of this work owned by others than ACM must be honored. Abstracting with credit is permitted. To copy otherwise, or republish, to post on servers or to redistribute to lists, requires prior specific permission and/or a fee. Request permissions from [email protected]

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Published: 04 March 2009

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Author Tags

  1. cs2
  2. problem solving
  3. programming
  4. think-aloud

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Overall Acceptance Rate 1,595 of 4,542 submissions, 35%

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Cited By

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  • (2024)Students’ perspectives on using digital tools in programming coursesDiscover Education10.1007/s44217-024-00144-43:1Online publication date: 22-May-2024
  • (2019)Investigation on the Learning Programming Techniques via Mobile Learning Application2019 4th International Conference and Workshops on Recent Advances and Innovations in Engineering (ICRAIE)10.1109/ICRAIE47735.2019.9037764(1-7)Online publication date: Nov-2019
  • (2017)Signifying software engineering to computational thinking learners with AgentSheets and PoliFacetsJournal of Visual Languages and Computing10.1016/j.jvlc.2017.01.00540:C(91-112)Online publication date: 1-Jun-2017
  • (2016)Uncovering difficulties in learning for the intermediate programmer2016 IEEE Frontiers in Education Conference (FIE)10.1109/FIE.2016.7757446(1-8)Online publication date: Oct-2016
  • (2016)Splat! er, shmup? A postmortem on a capstone production experience2016 IEEE Frontiers in Education Conference (FIE)10.1109/FIE.2016.7757399(1-9)Online publication date: Oct-2016
  • (2012)Similarities in CSE and Gemara educationProceedings of the 17th ACM annual conference on Innovation and technology in computer science education10.1145/2325296.2325409(392-392)Online publication date: 3-Jul-2012
  • (2011)Probing student problem solving skills in mathematical induction using a scenario based think aloud protocolProceedings of the 16th Western Canadian Conference on Computing Education10.1145/1989622.1989631(33-37)Online publication date: 6-May-2011
  • (2020)Problem-Solving StrategiesGuide to Teaching Computer Science10.1007/978-3-030-39360-1_8(143-168)Online publication date: 6-Aug-2020
  • (2015)Relationship between design and programming skills in an advanced computer programming classJournal of Computing Sciences in Colleges10.5555/2752981.275299330:5(39-45)Online publication date: 1-May-2015
  • (2015)Problem-Solving StrategiesGuide to Teaching Computer Science10.1007/978-1-4471-6630-6_5(75-93)Online publication date: 8-Jan-2015
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