Understanding novice programmer difficulties via guided learning

Learning to program is known to be problematic for a signif- icant number of students as evidenced by high failure rates reported by Computer Science schools. Students either fail to comprehend a range of fundamental programming con- cepts or carry misunderstandings and misconceptions about programming well into the semester, leading to summative assessment failures. Multiple choice questions in summative assessments are a popular choice of instrument to test novice learners of programming, yet during their formative stages such questions are typically used in the traditional\' or \ learning' contexts, leaving gaps in understanding of programming concepts. In this paper we report the use of multiple choice exercises in a guided learning approach, within the learning context of novice programmers who are typically rst-time university students of a Computer Sci- ence program. In addition to the use of multiple choice questions for practice, we propose a guided learning tool to identify cognitive lapses in learning programming. We re- port results of a pilot study that uses a partially-completed guided learning tool, to prevent students at the outset from falling into the cognitive traps that often ensnare the novice programmer.