Evaluating the Use and Effectiveness of Ungraded Practice Problems in an Introductory Programming Course
Caleb O'Malley, Ashish Aggarwal · 2020
Educational researchers have been interested in finding out factors which are pivotal in a students' success within any course. However, less is known about students' engagement with optional course content and its effect on learning outcomes. Optional content is any ungraded component of the course available to students for additional practice. In our context, it is ungraded quizzes based on concepts discussed in an introductory programming course. In this paper, we present the methodology, analysis, and results of a study concerned with how students engage with optional quizzes and what effects this content may have on students' learning. We find that before the midterm exam, over half of all students completed at least one quiz of the four available, while a third of students completed all available quizzes. Leading up to the midterm exam, we observed a large increase in submissions. During the second half of the semester, overall participation decreased slightly. Again, leading up to the final exam, students' submissions became more frequent. When investigating correlations between quiz completion and student performance, notable differences were observed between the highest and lowest levels of quiz completion. The results of this study will help computer science educators in understanding how students utilize optional content similar to ours and further guide in improving the effectiveness of such content, especially in the context of introductory programming courses. These insights will help to guide the creation and implementation of optional practice problems, with the goal to improve the student's overall experience of the course.