Programming pathways: A technique for analyzing novice programmers’ learning trajectories

Abstract

Introductory computer science courses are a valuable resource to students of all disciplines. While we often look at students’ end products to judge their proficiency, little analysis is done on the most integral aspect of learning to programming, the process. We also have a hard time quantifying how students’ programming changes over the course of a semester. In order to address these we show how a process-oriented analysis can identify meaningful trends in how programmers develop proficiency across various assignments.