article

Teaching roles of variables in elementary programming courses

Authors:

Marja Kuittinen,

Jorma SajaniemiAuthors Info & Claims

ACM SIGCSE Bulletin, Volume 36, Issue 3

Pages 57 - 61

https://doi.org/10.1145/1026487.1008014

Published: 28 June 2004 Publication History

Abstract

Computer programming is a difficult skill for many students and new methods and techniques to help novices to learn programming are needed. This paper presents roles of variables as a new concept that can be used to assist in learning and gives detailed instructions on techniques to present roles to novices. These techniques are based on current learning theories and they have been used in a classroom experiment comparing traditional teaching with role-based teaching. The results suggest that the introduction of roles provides students a new conceptual framework that enables them to mentally process programs in a way similar to that of good code comprehenders; the use of role-based animation seems to assist in the adoption of role knowledge and expert-like programming skill.

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Agarwal NKumar VRaman AKarkare AChoppella VPhatak DLuxton-Reilly ACraig M(2023)A Bug's New Life: Creating Refute Questions from Filtered CS1 Student Code SnapshotsProceedings of the ACM Conference on Global Computing Education Vol 110.1145/3576882.3617916(7-14)Online publication date: 5-Dec-2023
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Kalathas PParham-Mocello JElliot RLockwood EMerkle LDoyle MSheard JSoh LDorn B(2022)Exploring Math + CS in a Secondary Education Methods CourseProceedings of the 53rd ACM Technical Symposium on Computer Science Education - Volume 110.1145/3478431.3499405(689-695)Online publication date: 22-Feb-2022
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Shi N(2021)Improving Undergraduate Novice Programmer Comprehension through Case-Based Teaching with Roles of Variables to Provide ScaffoldingInformation10.3390/info1210042412:10(424)Online publication date: 16-Oct-2021
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Index Terms

Teaching roles of variables in elementary programming courses
1. Social and professional topics
  1. Professional topics
    1. Computing education
      1. Computing education programs
        Computer science education
2. Software and its engineering

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Teaching roles of variables in elementary programming courses
ITiCSE '04: Proceedings of the 9th annual SIGCSE conference on Innovation and technology in computer science education

Computer programming is a difficult skill for many students and new methods and techniques to help novices to learn programming are needed. This paper presents roles of variables as a new concept that can be used to assist in learning and gives detailed ...
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SIGCSE '06: Proceedings of the 37th SIGCSE technical symposium on Computer science education

Roles of variables capture tacit expert knowledge in a form that can be taught in introductory programming courses. A role describes some stereotypic use of variables, and only ten roles are needed to cover 99% of all variables in novice-level programs. ...

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Published In

cover image ACM SIGCSE Bulletin

ACM SIGCSE Bulletin Volume 36, Issue 3

September 2004

280 pages

ISSN:0097-8418

DOI:10.1145/1026487

Issue’s Table of Contents

ITiCSE '04: Proceedings of the 9th annual SIGCSE conference on Innovation and technology in computer science education
June 2004
296 pages
ISBN:1581138369
DOI:10.1145/1007996
Conference Chair:
Roger Boyle
University of Leeds, UK
,
Program Chairs:
Martyn Clark
University of Leeds, UK
,
Amruth Kumar
Ramapo College of NJ

Copyright © 2004 ACM.

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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Association for Computing Machinery

New York, NY, United States

Publication History

Published: 28 June 2004

Published in SIGCSE Volume 36, Issue 3

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Cited By

Agarwal NKumar VRaman AKarkare AChoppella VPhatak DLuxton-Reilly ACraig M(2023)A Bug's New Life: Creating Refute Questions from Filtered CS1 Student Code SnapshotsProceedings of the ACM Conference on Global Computing Education Vol 110.1145/3576882.3617916(7-14)Online publication date: 5-Dec-2023
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3576882.3617916
Kalathas PParham-Mocello JElliot RLockwood EMerkle LDoyle MSheard JSoh LDorn B(2022)Exploring Math + CS in a Secondary Education Methods CourseProceedings of the 53rd ACM Technical Symposium on Computer Science Education - Volume 110.1145/3478431.3499405(689-695)Online publication date: 22-Feb-2022
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3478431.3499405
Shi N(2021)Improving Undergraduate Novice Programmer Comprehension through Case-Based Teaching with Roles of Variables to Provide ScaffoldingInformation10.3390/info1210042412:10(424)Online publication date: 16-Oct-2021
https://doi.org/10.3390/info12100424
Lockwood EMørken K(2021)A Call for Research that Explores Relationships between Computing and Mathematical Thinking and Activity in RUMEInternational Journal of Research in Undergraduate Mathematics Education10.1007/s40753-020-00129-2Online publication date: 7-Jan-2021
https://doi.org/10.1007/s40753-020-00129-2
AKKAYA AÖZTÜRK G(2020)Algoritma yazma ve öğrenimi hakkında meslek yüksekokulu öğrencilerinin görüşleriOpinions of vocational school students about algorithm writing and learningBalıkesir Üniversitesi Fen Bilimleri Enstitüsü Dergisi10.25092/baunfbed.68083422:1(367-380)Online publication date: 10-Jan-2020
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Soltanpoor RThevathayan CD'Souza DPolycarpou IRead JAndreou PArmoni M(2018)Adaptive remediation for novice programmers through personalized prescriptive quizzesProceedings of the 23rd Annual ACM Conference on Innovation and Technology in Computer Science Education10.1145/3197091.3197097(51-56)Online publication date: 2-Jul-2018
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Markantonatos SPanagiotakopoulos CVerykios V(2018)Design, Implementation, and Evaluation of an Educational Software for the Teaching of the Programming Variable ConceptResearch on e-Learning and ICT in Education10.1007/978-3-319-95059-4_19(315-322)Online publication date: 5-Oct-2018
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Shi NCui WZhang PSun X(2017)Evaluating the Effectiveness Roles of Variables in the Novice Programmers LearningJournal of Educational Computing Research10.1177/073563311770731256:2(181-201)Online publication date: 10-May-2017
https://doi.org/10.1177/0735633117707312
Smetsers-Weeda RSmetsers S(2017)Problem Solving and Algorithmic Development with FlowchartsProceedings of the 12th Workshop on Primary and Secondary Computing Education10.1145/3137065.3137080(25-34)Online publication date: 8-Nov-2017
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Kohn TCaspersen MEdwards SBarnes TGarcia D(2017)Variable EvaluationProceedings of the 2017 ACM SIGCSE Technical Symposium on Computer Science Education10.1145/3017680.3017724(345-350)Online publication date: 8-Mar-2017
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