Thank you very much for this information. I have a copy of the Technical
report, but would be very interested to see the conference papers. The only
other work I have found that touches on the area is the work by Rountree et
al, and Wilson and Shrock regarding success factors in CS1 courses, and
also Wiedenbeck and Ramalingam regarding mental representations of
programs. My preliminary sweep of the literature suggests there has been
little else done in this area, but I need to spend more time searching. I
have only just started to look at the codespace angle - I have been
concentrating more on navigation of hyperspace.
Auckland is a long way from Kent!!
All the best,
Sue
On Nov 17 2005, [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
>>>>> "Sue" == sjj <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes:
Sue> I am looking at the applications of spatial skills training in
Sue> my PhD research, and am interested if anyone has any
Sue> information about correlations between spatial skills and
Sue> programming ability. There are some discussions about
Sue> navigation of codespace being similar to navigating real worlds
Sue> or hyperspace, and this is where I am coming from.
The BRACE study into success predictors for introductory programming
included a section on map drawing. In one part of the study, we asked
students to draw a map of a familiar route, and then classified them
according to the map style (survey, route, landmark). There was some
evidence that students who drew survey maps were more successful at
programming.
We only became aware of Cox and Fisher's work on codespace towards the
end of the study, but noted there are some tantalising connections. I'd
love to hear more about your research plans, or if there is anything
other help I can offer.
The main resource for the BRACE study is a tech report:
@techreport{Fincher:Kent-2005,
author = {Sally Fincher and Bob Baker and Ilona Box and Quintin
Cutts and Michael de Raadt and Patricia Haden and John
Hamer and Margaret Hamilton and Raymond Lister and
Marian Petre and Simon, Anthony Robins and Ken Sutton
and Denise Tolhurst and Jodi Tutty},
title = {{Programmed to succeed?: A multi-national,
multi-institutional study of introductory programming
courses}},
month = {April},
year = {2005},
pages = {65},
url = {http://www.cs.kent.ac.uk/pubs/2005/2157},
number = {1--05},
address = {Computing Laboratory, University of Kent, Canterbury,
Kent, UK},
}
There are also a number of conference papers on the study (the last two
are to appear in ACE'06 in February). I can forward copies if you are
interested.
@InProceedings{deRaadt:HERDSA-2005:407,
author = {Michael de Raadt and Margaret Hamilton and Raymond
Lister
and Jodi Tutty and Bob Baker and Ilona Box and Quintin
Cutts and Sally Fincher and Patricia Haden and John
Hamer and Marian Petre and Anthony Robins and Simon
and Ken Sutton and Denise Tolhurst},
title = {Approaches to Learning in Computer Programming Students
and Their Effect on Success},
booktitle = {Annual International Conference of the Higher
Education Research and Development Society of
Australasia (HERDSA)},
month = {July},
year = 2005,
pages = {407--414},
address = {Sydney, Australia}
}
@InProceedings(Simon:ACE-2006a,
author = {Simon and Sally Fincher and Anthony Robins and Bob Baker
and Quintin Cutts and Patricia Haden and Margaret Hamilton
and Marian Petre and Denise Tolhurst and Ilona Box and
Michael de Raadt
and John Hamer and Raymond Lister and Ken Sutton and
Jody Tutty},
title = {Predictors of Success in a First Programming Course},
booktitle = {{ACE'06} Australasian Computer Society Education
Conference},
publisher = {Australian Computer Society}
month = feb,
year = 2006,
pages = '(to appear)'
}
@InProceedings(Simon:ACE-2006b,
author = {Simon and Quintin Cutts and Sally Fincher and Patricia
Haden
and Anthony Robins and Ken Sutton and Bob Baker and Ilona
Box and Michael de Raadt and John Hamer and Margaret
Hamilton and Raymond Lister and Marian Petre and Denise
Tolhurst and Jody Tutty},
title = {The Ability to Articulate Strategy as a Predictor of
Programming Skill},
booktitle = {{ACE'06} Australasian Computer Society Education
Conference},
publisher = {Australian Computer Society}
month = feb,
year = 2006,
pages = '(to appear)'
}
Kind regards,
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