A Study of Tracing and Writing Performance of Novice Students in Introductory Programming

The tasks of programming include complex knowledge and skills that is, from understanding problems to evaluating validity of program. Novice students often face difficulties in learning programming due to various issues and the nature of the subject, which can be vague and invisible. A survey was conducted on 294 students from two universities to study novices’ problems in dealing with tracking the logical flow and writing a simple code. The average score for tracking and writing skills were quite disappointing. Students were only able to master the static part of programming knowledge. They lacked the knowledge in understanding and tracing the dynamic behavior of the program. This research attempts to propose a model to shift the internal working memory load of students through integrated visualization tools that can reveal the dynamic behavior of programs and related concepts that appear in each level of program abstractions.