%0 Conference Paper %1 Bennedssen:2008:AAI:1404520.1404523 %A Bennedssen, Jens %A Caspersen, Michael E. %B Proceedings of the Fourth international Workshop on Computing Education Research %C New York, NY, USA %D 2008 %I ACM %K ability abstraction indicator learning programmers_lament programming toread %P 15--26 %R 10.1145/1404520.1404523 %T Abstraction ability as an indicator of success for learning computing science? %U http://doi.acm.org/10.1145/1404520.1404523 %X Computing scientists generally agree that abstract thinking is a crucial component for practicing computer science.</p> <p>We report on a three-year longitudinal study to confirm the hypothesis that general abstraction ability has a positive impact on performance in computing science.</p> <p>Abstraction ability is operationalized as stages of cognitive development for which validated tests exist. Performance in computing science is operationalized as grade in the final assessment of ten courses of a bachelor's degree programme in computing science. The validity of the operationalizations is discussed.</p> <p>We have investigated the positive impact overall, for two groupings of courses (a content-based grouping and a grouping based on SOLO levels of the courses' intended learning outcome), and for each individual course.</p> <p>Surprisingly, our study shows that there is hardly any correlation between stage of cognitive development (abstraction ability) and final grades in standard CS courses, neither for the various group-ings, nor for the individual courses. Possible explanations are discussed. %@ 978-1-60558-216-0

@inproceedings{Bennedssen:2008:AAI:1404520.1404523, abstract = {Computing scientists generally agree that abstract thinking is a crucial component for practicing computer science.</p> <p>We report on a three-year longitudinal study to confirm the hypothesis that general abstraction ability has a positive impact on performance in computing science.</p> <p>Abstraction ability is operationalized as stages of cognitive development for which validated tests exist. Performance in computing science is operationalized as grade in the final assessment of ten courses of a bachelor's degree programme in computing science. The validity of the operationalizations is discussed.</p> <p>We have investigated the positive impact overall, for two groupings of courses (a content-based grouping and a grouping based on SOLO levels of the courses' intended learning outcome), and for each individual course.</p> <p>Surprisingly, our study shows that there is hardly any correlation between stage of cognitive development (abstraction ability) and final grades in standard CS courses, neither for the various group-ings, nor for the individual courses. Possible explanations are discussed.}, acmid = {1404523}, added-at = {2012-02-09T22:47:33.000+0100}, address = {New York, NY, USA}, author = {Bennedssen, Jens and Caspersen, Michael E.}, biburl = {https://www.bibsonomy.org/bibtex/203cdf152fb5df8a2196983b6bcb16ef9/schmidt2}, booktitle = {Proceedings of the Fourth international Workshop on Computing Education Research}, description = {Abstraction ability as an indicator of success for learning computing science?}, doi = {10.1145/1404520.1404523}, interhash = {8b4b40b279e1f9c5d41d5e16d07b3826}, intrahash = {03cdf152fb5df8a2196983b6bcb16ef9}, isbn = {978-1-60558-216-0}, keywords = {ability abstraction indicator learning programmers_lament programming toread}, location = {Sydney, Australia}, numpages = {12}, pages = {15--26}, publisher = {ACM}, series = {ICER '08}, timestamp = {2012-05-04T13:37:00.000+0200}, title = {Abstraction ability as an indicator of success for learning computing science?}, url = {http://doi.acm.org/10.1145/1404520.1404523}, year = 2008 }