The Relationship Between Learning Programming and Problem-Solving Ability

This study is aimed to clarify the relationship between programming experience and problem-solving abilities. The students in three introductory programming courses (CS103-FORTRAN, CS105-PASCAL, CS106-BASIC) offered by the Department of Computer Science at University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign in the fall semester of 1987 served as the subjects for this one-semester long study. They were given pretests and posttests on problems in seven categories: word problem translation, word problem solution, following procedures, following directions, logical reasoning, visual ability, and verbal ability. The results of this study showed that (a) overall student problem-solving abilities were significantly improved at the level of 0.05 after they had attended a semester long programming course, (b) the logical reasoning component of the definition contributed most to the significance, and (c) the class of CS105-PASCAL in this experiment had a significant effect in improving student ability to solve word problems.

Name thesis:degree_name

Ph.D.

Level thesis:degree_level

Dissertation

Discipline thesis:degree_discipline

Education

Grantor

University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

Year dc:date

2014

Author dc:creator

• Tu, Jho-Ju

Contributors dc:contributor

• Dennis, Richard,

• Education, Tests and Measurements
• Education, Technology of
• Education, Curriculum and Instruction

Identifier

(UMI)AAI8908874

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:www.ideals.illinois.edu:2142/71907