Share Paper: FunGram: A Tool to Facilitate Problem Solving Among First Year Programming Students
Abstract: Learning to develop computer programs is considered a daunting task for first year programming students. A multi-national and multi-institutional study revealed that most first year computer science students do not develop the expected computer programming competencies of reading comprehension and problem solving abilities. The goal of this research is to build upon existing research on mathematical problem solving to develop a computer-based instructional tool to facilitate problem solving for first year programming students. This research resulted in the development of the FunGram tool, which combines structure-emphasizing examples with problem solving steps and illustrates the relationship between problem solving, pseudocode generation, ...