Modeling the factors that influence understanding of concepts in introductory programming course

The aim of the diploma thesis is modeling the factors that influence the performance of students in introductory programming. We wanted to determine what factors influence the successful passing of the exam from the introductory programming. We also analyzed three programming tasks, which reflect concepts that we think are difficult for novice programmers and identified how students in these tasks make mistakes. In the theoretical part, we identified factors that affect the performance of the novice programmers on the basis of selected literature. In the empirical part, we conducted a research among students on the factors that influence the success in passing an exam in programming. We invited students from University of Ljubljana, who take the introductory programming courses. With the questionnaire we collected data on high school, success in graduating from high school, learning style, prior knowledge of programming, attendance and participation in lectures and tutorials, assessment of the introductory programming course, the number of attempts needed to pass the subject ... We also analyzed the way of solving three tasks mentioned above. The tasks were added to the questionnaire. For the data modeling, we used decision tree analysis. We interpreted them with a view to improve the didactic approach to introductory programming. Decision models suggest that the students’ success in programming is mostly influenced by the success of graduating from high school - whether the student carried out general or vocational matura and how many points the student scored