Classification of Cognitive Difficulties of Students to Learn Computer Programming

Teaching and learning of computer programming is mentioned as one of the grand challenges in Computing Education. A study has been conducted in this regard, to analyze the difficulties of students in programming education. This study analyses the data collected from a group of engineering undergraduates. The respondents have mentioned programming difficulties at various granularities and levels. It has been observed that they have problems in all the three domains of Bloom’s Taxonomy. But majority of their difficulties are in cognitive domain. The affective domain and psychomotor domain problems listed were trivial and less in number. It has been further observed that students have cognitive difficulties at various levels, during programming and program comprehension, independent of the programming language used. These difficulties are mapped to various levels of Bloom’s taxonomy in cognitive domain – Knowledge, Comprehension, Application, Analysis, Synthesis and Evaluation. This mapping helped to identify some of the cognitive processes involved in programming. Strengthening of these cognitive skills in students may improve the effectiveness of programming education. This study is an initial step of an ongoing research to develop a cognitive model for programming education.