Enhancement Projects 2014-2015
A call was put out for projects that involved enhancement work which reflected the QAA Enhancement Theme: Student Transitions, Phase 1. The following projects were successful and their reports are listed below:
Learning how to programme computers is one of the major hurdles for our first year Computer Sciences (CS) students across Heriot-Watt campuses. A multi-national, multi-institutional assessment of programming skills of first-year CS students found that many students do not know how to program at the conclusion of their introductory courses (McCracken et al., 2001). Some of the potential issues for this poor performance discussed in the study are constrained lab time, large classes and insufficient feedback. In previous work, we found that automated feedback can help students to become independent learners when faced with new programming tasks (Rieser, PGCAP report, 2014). Here, we propose to extend this previous work to help first year CS students to become independent learners and master the art of programming during their first year at the university.
Report: Helping 1st Year CS students to become independent learners through automated feedback by Dr Gudmund Grov