Tony Jenkins

The motivation of students of programming

Students approach the study of computing in Higher Education in increasing numbers from an increasingly wide variety of backgrounds. In most degree level courses one of the first modules students will encounter is intended to teach them to program.As the students become more diverse, so do their motivations for taking their degree. Anecdotal evidence from many institutions is that students are becoming more tactical, and will engage only in those activities that they see as contributing to an eventual highly paid job.This paper describes an investigation into the motivations of students for taking a degree in computing, and for studying programming in particular. The results raise a number of issues for the teaching of programming.

Gender and programming: what's going on?

The learning (and teaching) of programming in Higher Education is a perennial problem, and is the subject of much attention and innovation.One way in which the problem can be addressed is for instructors to investigate and thus better understand the ways in which students learn to program.We present the results of investigations carried out at the Universities of Kent and Leeds into the ways in which gender influences the learning approach of students in programming. The research shows that gender is a significant factor in determining the way in which students approach learning to program. A better understanding of the issues raised would lead to more effective teaching and thus better learning.

A First Look

Java is big. As you learn more about it you will come to realise just how true this is. Java is a truly general-purpose programming language; you could use a program written in Java for just about anything from flying an airliner to keeping track of numbers on a mobile phone. This is good, because you are going to learn a powerful language with many useful applications. But it is also bad because it’s difficult to know where to start. There really is a lot going on in even the simplest Java program.

Diversity and Motivation in Introductory Programming

Abstract The number of students entering Higher Education in the UK continues to increase, and there is no sign of an end to this trend. This expansion brings with it a more diverse student body — students are diverse in terms of their prior experiences, their pre-existing skills, their expectations and their motivations. This highly varied student body often encounters a teaching regime that was designed for a smaller, and much more homogeneous, group of students. This is a significant problem in Computing courses, and especially in introductory programming. Students will approach learning to program from a wide variety of backgrounds, yet they will usually be taught and assessed in the same way. This paper considers the diversity of the introductory programming class, and describes some attempts to handle this diversity in the teaching programmes at the School of Computing at the University of Leeds.

An Agent-Based Model of Burglary

Occurrences of crime are complex phenomena. They are the result of a large number of interrelated elements which can include environmental factors as well as complex human behaviours. Traditionally, crime occurrences have been modelled using statistical techniques, and although such approaches are useful, they face difficulties in providing predictive analyses and with the integration of behavioural information. Also, it is particularly difficult to account for the strongly influential effect of local urban form. Agent-based modelling is a relatively new modelling paradigm that has generated a considerable amount of interest. An agent is an independent component of a system which interacts with other agents and its environment to achieve goals. In this manner, large systems of agents can be created to mimic real scenarios. Most importantly, the agents can incorporate behavioural information to determine how they should achieve their goals, and models can include a highly detailed environment. This paper presents an agent-based model used to predict burglary rates, which, despite its simplicity, yields interesting results. We apply the model to the city of Leeds, UK. The model indicates that the urban configuration in Leeds is a major element in determining the level of crime across the city. It also demonstrates that agent-based modelling is an excellent tool for these types of analyses with much potential.

Research-led innovation in teaching and learning programming

We describe an attempt to bridge the gap between educational research and practical innovation by making a package of changes to an introductory programming module based on the insights of existing theoretical work. Theoretical principles are described, used to evaluate previous practices and then employed to guide systematic changes. Preliminary evaluation indicates substantial improvements in student performance and enjoyment while indicating areas in need of further work.

Taxing our Best Students

Abstract A significant challenge that faces any teacher of introductory programming is the diversity of the class. At one extreme there will be students who have never programmed before, while at the other there will be students who have many years experience of programming. Handling this diversity is difficult. The temptation for the instructor is often to focus on the novice group and to assume that the others will get by with minimal supervision. This is understandable, but it can be risky. There is a very real risk that the neglected group of experienced programmers become bored and disengage from the course. At the worst, they can lose motivation and fail or drop out altogether. This paper describes and presents the outcomes of a project aimed at challenging the more experienced programmers in four introductory programming classes at four different UK institutions. The project took the form of a competition in which students were asked to devise and solve a series of programming challenges.

Classes and Objects

You’ve now seen quite a lot of Java. You’ve seen how to create a class and how to create instances of the class (objects), and how to use these objects in very simple programs. This has all been a bit informal, though, so the time has come to have a proper look and to get some practice in writing your own programs. This chapter and the last one start you on the way to doing that.

A Word on Testing

You have now written your first complete Java program. Most of the rest of this book will be about Java, but in many ways writing a program is only half of the story. If a program is going to be truly useful the programmer and, more importantly, the program’s intended final users must have confidence in the results that it produces. They must be sure that the results they see from the program are correct. Business users are potentially going to base costly business decisions on the results produced by the programs they use, pilots are going to trust navigational systems in their aircraft, and so on. This brings us to a brief pause from looking at Java. This chapter looks briefly at how and why computer programs are tested.

Objects The Building Block

You already know that Java is an object-oriented programming language. Many other currently popular programming languages including C+ +, Python, and C# also use this object-oriented approach. This means, not surprisingly, that programming in Java (and these other languages) is based around the use of objects; objects are the basic building block of any object-oriented computer program. Java takes the idea further than some other object-oriented languages to the extent that almost everything in a Java program is an object; even the Java program itself looks rather like an object (even if it isn’t actually one).