Collaborative Research: Expanding Subgoal Labels for Imperative Programming to Further Improve Student Learning Outcome

This IUSE Engaged Student Learning project aims to serve the national interest by developing, implementing, and studying an instructional method that benefits students at risk of failure or dropping an introductory course in programming. The future workforce will require or benefit from programming knowledge, which means that most, if not all, students should successfully complete an initial programming course.

This project builds on prior work that developed, implemented, and assessed the effectiveness of learning programming using subgoal labels and provided evidence that students who learned with subgoal labels perform better on initial assessments, and are less likely to fail or drop the course. This project extends that work by recruiting and training additional instructors to use subgoal instructional materials, and to develop, and evaluate, additional instructional materials using the programing language Java.

The instructional materials that will be developed in Java will cover additional programming topics such as inheritance, polymorphism, and recursion. Instructional materials will include worked examples, practice problems, and assessments, all implemented in eBooks for maximum usage. By expanding the use, topics, and programming language within the instructional materials, further evidence of improved student learning and retention will be generated.

Comparison of the initial subgoal results with those from more advanced Java topics and Python subgoals will be evaluated. The NSF IUSE: EHR Program supports research and development projects to improve the effectiveness of STEM education for all students. Through the Engaged Student Learning track, the program supports the creation, exploration, and implementation of promising practices and tools.

This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.