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This paper describes a multi-national, multi-institutional study that investigated introductory programming courses .. Student participants were drawn from eleven institutions, mainly in Australasia, during the academic year of 2004. A number of diagnostic tasks were used to explore cognitive, behavioural, and attitudinal factors such as spatial visualisation and reasoning, the ability to articulate strategies for commonplace search and design tasks, and attitudes to studying. The results indicate that a deep approach to learning was positively correlated with mark for the course, while a surface approach was negatively correlated; spatial visualisation skills are correlated with success; a progression of map drawing styles identified in the literature has a significant correlation with marks; and increasing measures of richness of articulation of a search strategy are also associated with higher marks. Finally, a qualitative analysis of short interviews identified the qualities that students themselves regarded as important to success in programming. © 2006, Australian Computer Society, Inc.

In this paper, we present the results of one aspect of a multinational, multi-institutional study of computer programming students. Specifically, this paper reports on an exploration of relationships between novice programmers' map-drawing styles (landmark, route or survey) and success in a first programming course at tertiary level. Relationships were found between map-drawing style and success of students in introductory programming courses, but there were mediating factors that resulted in some mixed findings between the countries in which data was collected. The results of this study identify some rich areas for further exploration, and suggests how this line of research might progress. © 2006, Australian Computer Society, Inc.

A multi-national, multi-institutional study investigating introductory programming courses drew on student participants from eleven institutions, mainly in Australasia, during the academic year of 2004. A number of diagnostic tasks were used to explore cognitive, behavioural, and attitudinal factors such as spatial visualisation and reasoning, the ability to articulate strategies for commonplace search and design tasks, and attitudes to studying. This paper reports in detail on the task that required participants to articulate a commonplace search strategy. The results indicate that increasing measures of richness of articulation of a search strategy are associated with higher marks in the course. © 2006, Australian Computer Society, Inc.