article

What do beginning students know, and what can they do?

Authors:

Beth SimonAuthors Info & Claims

ACM SIGCSE Bulletin, Volume 38, Issue 3

Page 329

https://doi.org/10.1145/1140123.1140236

Published: 26 June 2006 Publication History

Get Access

Abstract

We are studying what students know about computer science-related topics before they take formal coursework at the university level. Preliminary results suggest that entering students have a fairly sophisticated understanding of algorithms. We are exploring other central computing topics for similar shared commonsense understanding.

References

[1]

G. E. Evans and M. G. Simkin. What best predicts computer proficiency? Commun. ACM, 32(11):1322--1327, 1989.

Digital Library

Google Scholar

[2]

M. E. Hoffman and D. R. Vance. Computer literacy: what students know and from whom they learned it. SIGCSE Bull., 37(1):356--360, 2005.

Digital Library

Google Scholar

[3]

C. Schulte and J. Magenheim. Novices' expectations and prior knowledge of software development: results of a study with high school students. In Proceedings of ICER '05, pages 143--153, 2005.

Digital Library

Google Scholar

[4]

A. Schwill. Fundamental ideas of computer science. Bull. EATCS, 53:274--295, 1994.

Google Scholar

[5]

P. Ventura and B. Ramamurthy. Wanted: CS1 students. no experience required. SIGCSE Bull., 36(1):240--244, 2004.

Digital Library

Google Scholar

Cited By

View all

Simon BBouvier DChen TLewandowski GMcCartney RSanders K(2008)Common sense computing (episode 4): debuggingComputer Science Education10.1080/0899340080211469818:2(117-133)Online publication date: Jun-2008
https://doi.org/10.1080/08993400802114698
Carter JWhite SFraser KKurkovsky SMcCreesh CWieck M(2010)ITiCSE 2010 working group report motivating our top studentsProceedings of the 2010 ITiCSE working group reports10.1145/1971681.1971685(29-47)Online publication date: 28-Jun-2010
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/1971681.1971685
Lewandowski GBouvier DMcCartney RSanders KSimon BAnderson RFincher SGuzdial M(2007)Commonsense computing (episode 3)Proceedings of the third international workshop on Computing education research10.1145/1288580.1288598(133-144)Online publication date: 15-Sep-2007
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/1288580.1288598

Index Terms

What do beginning students know, and what can they do?
1. Social and professional topics
  1. Professional topics
    1. Computing education
      1. Computing education programs
        Computer science education

Recommendations

What do beginning students know, and what can they do?
ITICSE '06: Proceedings of the 11th annual SIGCSE conference on Innovation and technology in computer science education

We are studying what students know about computer science-related topics before they take formal coursework at the university level. Preliminary results suggest that entering students have a fairly sophisticated understanding of algorithms. We are ...
Georgia Computes! An Intervention in a US State, with Formal and Informal Education in a Policy Context
Special Issue on Computing Education in (K-12) Schools

Georgia Computes! (GaComputes) was a six-year (2006--2012) project to improve computing education across the state of Georgia in the United States, funded by the National Science Foundation. The goal of GaComputes was to broaden participation in ...
CS Education: Catching the Wave
SIGCSE '16: Proceedings of the 47th ACM Technical Symposium on Computing Science Education

Computer Science (CS) education has caught a wave -- of media attention, public support, public/private commitments, broad-based participation by educators, and a surge in student enrollments at the undergraduate level. It is a startling change over ...

Comments

Information & Contributors

Information

Published In

ACM SIGCSE Bulletin Volume 38, Issue 3

September 2006

367 pages

ISSN:0097-8418

DOI:10.1145/1140123

Issue’s Table of Contents

ITICSE '06: Proceedings of the 11th annual SIGCSE conference on Innovation and technology in computer science education
June 2006
390 pages
ISBN:1595930558
DOI:10.1145/1140124
Conference Chair:
Renzo Davoli
Università di Bologna, Italy
,
Program Chairs:
Michael Goldweber
Xavier University
,
Paola Salomoni
Università di Bologna, Italy

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]

Publisher

Association for Computing Machinery

New York, NY, United States

Publication History

Published: 26 June 2006

Published in SIGCSE Volume 38, Issue 3

Check for updates

Author Tags

Qualifiers

Article

Contributors

Other Metrics

View Article Metrics

Bibliometrics & Citations

Bibliometrics

Article Metrics

3
Total Citations
View Citations
280
Total Downloads

Downloads (Last 12 months)1
Downloads (Last 6 weeks)0

Reflects downloads up to 12 Sep 2024

Other Metrics

View Author Metrics

Citations

Cited By

View all

Simon BBouvier DChen TLewandowski GMcCartney RSanders K(2008)Common sense computing (episode 4): debuggingComputer Science Education10.1080/0899340080211469818:2(117-133)Online publication date: Jun-2008
https://doi.org/10.1080/08993400802114698
Carter JWhite SFraser KKurkovsky SMcCreesh CWieck M(2010)ITiCSE 2010 working group report motivating our top studentsProceedings of the 2010 ITiCSE working group reports10.1145/1971681.1971685(29-47)Online publication date: 28-Jun-2010
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/1971681.1971685
Lewandowski GBouvier DMcCartney RSanders KSimon BAnderson RFincher SGuzdial M(2007)Commonsense computing (episode 3)Proceedings of the third international workshop on Computing education research10.1145/1288580.1288598(133-144)Online publication date: 15-Sep-2007
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/1288580.1288598

View Options

Get Access

Login options

Check if you have access through your login credentials or your institution to get full access on this article.

Cited By

Index Terms

Recommendations

What do beginning students know, and what can they do?

Georgia Computes! An Intervention in a US State, with Formal and Informal Education in a Policy Context

CS Education: Catching the Wave