research-article

Impact of Bilingual CS Education on Student Learning and Engagement in a Data Structures Course

Authors:

Adalbert Gerald Soosai Raj,

Viren Abhyankar,

Saswati Mukerjee,

Richard Halverson,

Jignesh M. PatelAuthors Info & Claims

Koli Calling '19: Proceedings of the 19th Koli Calling International Conference on Computing Education Research

Article No.: 24, Pages 1 - 10

https://doi.org/10.1145/3364510.3364518

Published: 21 November 2019 Publication History

Abstract

Learning data structures is hard when taught using a new programming language (e.g., C++), while the students had learned introductory programming in a different language (e.g., C). Learning data structures might even be harder for non-native English speakers, when it is taught in a natural language (e.g., English) that is not the students' native language. We were interested in finding the effect of an instructional design that combines the students' native language (e.g., Tamil) along with English on students' understanding of select topics in a data structures course using C++. We designed an experiment to teach a few data structures (e.g., strings, vectors, maps) in the Standard C++ Library to two groups of undergraduate students in Tamil Nadu, India. We taught the experimental group using English and Tamil (native language of students in Tamil Nadu) and the control group using only English. We conducted a pre-test and a post-test to test students' understanding of programming before and after our intervention. We also conducted an English test to assess their competence in English. We collected data on classroom interaction based on the questions that students asked in lectures during our intervention. We found that teaching data structures using native language and English is no different than teaching data structures using only English. We also found that the native language had an impact on the student engagement and classroom interaction by creating more discussion within the Tamil+English (experimental) classroom when compared to the English-only (control) classroom.

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Cited By

Shah AAgarwal VGranado MDriscoll JHogan EPorter LGriswold WSoosai Raj ALaakso MMonga MSimon Sheard J(2023)The Impact of a Remote Live-Coding Pedagogy on Student Programming Processes, Grades, and Lecture Questions AskedProceedings of the 2023 Conference on Innovation and Technology in Computer Science Education V. 110.1145/3587102.3588846(533-539)Online publication date: 29-Jun-2023
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3587102.3588846
Lei YAllen MMerkle LDoyle MSheard JSoh LDorn B(2022)English Language Learners in Computer Science EducationProceedings of the 53rd ACM Technical Symposium on Computer Science Education - Volume 110.1145/3478431.3499299(57-63)Online publication date: 22-Feb-2022
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3478431.3499299
Khan TNabi S(2021)English versus Native Language for Higher Education in Computer Science: A Pilot Study21st Koli Calling International Conference on Computing Education Research10.1145/3488042.3488070(1-5)Online publication date: 17-Nov-2021
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3488042.3488070
Show More Cited By

Index Terms

Impact of Bilingual CS Education on Student Learning and Engagement in a Data Structures Course
1. Social and professional topics
  1. Professional topics
    1. Computing education
      1. Computing education programs
        Computer science education

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Koli Calling '19: Proceedings of the 19th Koli Calling International Conference on Computing Education Research

November 2019

247 pages

ISBN:9781450377157

DOI:10.1145/3364510

Conference Chairs:
Petri Ihantola
University of Helsinki, Finland
,
Nick Falkner
University of Adelaide, Australia

Copyright © 2019 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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University of Helsinki
Univ. Eastern Finland: University of Eastern Finland
The University of Adelaide, Australia
SIGCSE: ACM Special Interest Group on Computer Science Education

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Association for Computing Machinery

New York, NY, United States

Publication History

Published: 21 November 2019

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Koli Calling '19

Koli Calling '19: 19th Koli Calling International Conference on Computing Education Research

November 21 - 24, 2019

Koli, Finland

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Cited By

Shah AAgarwal VGranado MDriscoll JHogan EPorter LGriswold WSoosai Raj ALaakso MMonga MSimon Sheard J(2023)The Impact of a Remote Live-Coding Pedagogy on Student Programming Processes, Grades, and Lecture Questions AskedProceedings of the 2023 Conference on Innovation and Technology in Computer Science Education V. 110.1145/3587102.3588846(533-539)Online publication date: 29-Jun-2023
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3587102.3588846
Lei YAllen MMerkle LDoyle MSheard JSoh LDorn B(2022)English Language Learners in Computer Science EducationProceedings of the 53rd ACM Technical Symposium on Computer Science Education - Volume 110.1145/3478431.3499299(57-63)Online publication date: 22-Feb-2022
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3478431.3499299
Khan TNabi S(2021)English versus Native Language for Higher Education in Computer Science: A Pilot Study21st Koli Calling International Conference on Computing Education Research10.1145/3488042.3488070(1-5)Online publication date: 17-Nov-2021
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3488042.3488070
Chiodini LHauswirth M(2021)Wrong Answers for Wrong Reasons: The Risks of Ad Hoc InstrumentsProceedings of the 21st Koli Calling International Conference on Computing Education Research10.1145/3488042.3488045(1-11)Online publication date: 17-Nov-2021
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3488042.3488045

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