Identifying latent patterns in undergraduate Students’ programming profiles


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ALTUN A., MAZMAN AKAR S. G.

Smart Learning Environments, cilt.2, sa.1, 2015 (Scopus) identifier

  • Yayın Türü: Makale / Tam Makale
  • Cilt numarası: 2 Sayı: 1
  • Basım Tarihi: 2015
  • Doi Numarası: 10.1186/s40561-015-0020-0
  • Dergi Adı: Smart Learning Environments
  • Derginin Tarandığı İndeksler: Scopus
  • Anahtar Kelimeler: Mathematics Achievement, Mental Rotation, Programming Performance, Verbal Memory, Work Memory Capacity
  • Uşak Üniversitesi Adresli: Evet

Özet

This study aims to explore and reveal profiling patterns in the measurement of cognitive and noncognitivecharacteristics of undergraduate students’ programming performances. Spatial skills, workingmemory, perceived programming self-efficacy, mathematics scores, and academic grade point averagescores were taken indicative variables to be explored. Participants of the study are 100 undergraduatestudents registered to the Programming-I course at two different universities. The data were analyzedthrough multi-dimensional profile analysis. The result of the multidimensional scaling analysis indicated twodifferent profiles for the two groups: high and low programming performance groups. For both groups,relationship between the most similar variables was found to be verbal memory, mathematics achievementand perceived programming self-efficacy. The results indicated that there was a relatively similarrelationship between visual-spatial memory and spatial orientation skills in the low-performance group,while mental rotation skill was significantly different than the other variables. It was noted that two profiles forhigh- and low-performance groups were quite different in terms of mental rotation skill. It was also found that spatial orientation, visual-spatial memory and mental rotation performances were all different from eachother, and from the other three variables in the group with high programming performance. The mostdefinitive variables for low- and high-performance groups were self-efficacy, verbal memory andmathematics achievement. This study revealed that only verbal memory was the determinant variable inboth groups for working memory.