Article

An analysis of patterns of debugging among novice computer science students

Authors:

Marzieh Ahmadzadeh,

Colin HigginsAuthors Info & Claims

ITiCSE '05: Proceedings of the 10th annual SIGCSE conference on Innovation and technology in computer science education

Pages 84 - 88

https://doi.org/10.1145/1067445.1067472

Published: 27 June 2005 Publication History

Abstract

The process by which students learn to program is a major issue in computer science educational research. Programming is a fundamental part of the computer science curriculum, but one which is often problematic. It seems to be difficult to find an effective method of teaching that is suitable for all students. In this research we tried to gain insights into ways of improving our teaching by a careful examination of students' mistakes. The compiler errors that were generated by their programs together with the pattern that was observed in their debugging activities formed the basis of this research. We discovered that many students with a good understanding of programming do not acquire the skills to debug programs effectively, and this is a major impediment to their producing working code of any complexity. Skill at debugging seems to increase a programmer's confidence and we suggest that more emphasis be placed on debugging skills in the teaching of programming.

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Cited By

Park ECheon J(2024)Exploring Debugging Challenges and Strategies Using Structural Topic Model: A Comparative Analysis of High and Low-Performing StudentsJournal of Educational Computing Research10.1177/07356331241291174Online publication date: 13-Oct-2024
https://doi.org/10.1177/07356331241291174
Ziemann FReuß F(2024)Systematic Debugging of Logical Errors in Source CodeProceedings of the 19th WiPSCE Conference on Primary and Secondary Computing Education Research10.1145/3677619.3678105(1-4)Online publication date: 16-Sep-2024
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3677619.3678105
Bird W(2024)Faceless Adversary, Feckless Colleague: The Many Sides of ChatGPTProceedings of the 26th Western Canadian Conference on Computing Education10.1145/3660650.3660656(1-6)Online publication date: 2-May-2024
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Index Terms

An analysis of patterns of debugging among novice computer science students
1. Social and professional topics
  1. Professional topics
    1. Computing education
      1. Computing education programs
        Computer science education

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Published In

cover image ACM Conferences

ITiCSE '05: Proceedings of the 10th annual SIGCSE conference on Innovation and technology in computer science education

June 2005

440 pages

ISBN:1595930248

DOI:10.1145/1067445

Conference Chairs:
José Cunha
Universidade Nova de Lisboa, Portugal
,
William Fleischman
Villanova University
,
Program Chairs:
Viera K. Proulx
Northeastern University
,
João Lourenço
Universidade Nova de Lisboa, Portugal

ACM SIGCSE Bulletin Volume 37, Issue 3
September 2005
418 pages
ISSN:0097-8418
DOI:10.1145/1151954
Issue’s Table of Contents

Copyright © 2005 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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Publication History

Published: 27 June 2005

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ITiCSE05

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ITiCSE05: Innovation and Technology in Computer Science Education

June 27 - 29, 2005

Caparica, Portugal

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Overall Acceptance Rate 552 of 1,613 submissions, 34%

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Cited By

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https://doi.org/10.1177/07356331241291174
Ziemann FReuß F(2024)Systematic Debugging of Logical Errors in Source CodeProceedings of the 19th WiPSCE Conference on Primary and Secondary Computing Education Research10.1145/3677619.3678105(1-4)Online publication date: 16-Sep-2024
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3677619.3678105
Bird W(2024)Faceless Adversary, Feckless Colleague: The Many Sides of ChatGPTProceedings of the 26th Western Canadian Conference on Computing Education10.1145/3660650.3660656(1-6)Online publication date: 2-May-2024
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3660650.3660656
Agarwal N(2024)Finding and Investigating Buggy Codes to Make CS1 Learning EfficientProceedings of the 17th Innovations in Software Engineering Conference10.1145/3641399.3641442(1-3)Online publication date: 22-Feb-2024
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3641399.3641442
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Gupta AJindal MGoyal A(2024)Identification of Student Programming Patterns through Clickstream Data2024 IEEE International Conference on Computing, Power and Communication Technologies (IC2PCT)10.1109/IC2PCT60090.2024.10486775(1153-1158)Online publication date: 9-Feb-2024
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Rebollido FCaro J(2024)Code Comprehension Problems in Introductory Programming to Overcome ChatGPTNovel and Intelligent Digital Systems: Proceedings of the 4th International Conference (NiDS 2024)10.1007/978-3-031-73344-4_50(582-593)Online publication date: 16-Oct-2024
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