Due to the complex nature of SCC, a modelling process (Wood et al., 1976) - where instructors gradually guide their students in mastering these cognitive processes - could be instrumental in enabling students to perform tasks that were initially beyond their capacity. Some authors (Orlov et al., 2016 Praveen, 2016) describe it as a skill that requires efficient application of a series of complex cognitive processes. SCC generally refers to the reading and interpreting of pieces of source code (Busjahn & Schulte, 2013 Lister et al., 2006). Source code comprehension (SCC) is a core skill that many Computer Science (CS) students continue to struggle with (McCartney et al., 2013 Xie et al, 2018). Keywords: Source code comprehension, cognitive processes, cognitive-related support strategies, decoding the disciplines, Computer Science Education, novice programmers Social and professional topics ~ Computer science education.Programming instructors are encouraged to continuously emphasise strategies like these when modelling their expert ways of thinking regarding efficient SCC more explicitly to their novice students. The insights gained were then used to formulate a set of important cognitive-related support strategies for efficient SCC. Positioned within Step 2 of the DtDs framework, this study employed decoding interviews and observations, followed by narrative data analysis, to identify the underlying cognitive processes and related support (though often 'hidden') strategies utilised by a select group of experienced programming instructors during an SCC task. A clear understanding of the underlying cognitive processes and related support strategies employed by experts during source code comprehension (SCC) could ultimately be utilised to help novice programmers to better execute the cognitive processes necessary to efficiently comprehend source code. However, instructors often take certain important mental operations for granted and do not explain these 'hidden' steps explicitly when modelling problem solutions. As emphasised in the Decoding the Disciplines (DtDs) framework, each discipline (including Computer Science) has its own unique set of mental operations. Many novice programmers fail to comprehend source code and its related concepts in the same way that their instructors do. This is how we get from ideas as simple as recognizing a cow all the way to concepts as complex as, “Do cows recognize me?”Īccording to cognitivists, schemata form the basis of those and all other concepts.Decoding the underlying cognitive processes and related support strategies utilised by expert instructors during source code comprehensionĭepartment of Computer Science and Informatics, University of the Free State, Bloemfontein, South Africa. Over the course of human development, people form new and ever more complex schemata, which build off of other schemata. In other words, you can’t say Piaget was not ambitious. Of course, that is a basic example, but Piaget argues that schemata essentially form the basis of every human cognitive process. Even when the child leaves the farm, they will still have an understanding and concept of what a cow is and isn’t. The child must have some concept of what a live thing is, how to count to four and so on.įor the child, all these various components form the “core meaning” of a cow. These acts of recognition, of course, can be broken down further. They see a thing that is alive, has four legs, is eating grass and makes a mooing sound. This action of recognition can be broken down into its components: The child doesn’t just see a cow. It is repeatable in that that the child will continue to recognize it (and animals identical to it) as a cow. The “cohesive, repeatable action” is the child’s recognition of the cow. Let’s break this down with a simple example: A child recognizes a cow on a farm. Here is how Piaget defines a schema: “a cohesive, repeatable action sequence possessing component actions that are tightly interconnected and governed by a core meaning.”
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