Chapter 1 Wance

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CHAPTER I

THE PROBLEM AND ITS BACKGROUND

Introduction

Programming is a fundamental part of Information and Communication

Technology (ICT) Curriculum, though it is often problematic for students. It is

well-known that many student eperience difficulties in learning and practicing

programming. To become a good programmer, a student must ac!uire a series of

abilities that go well beyond knowing the synta of some programming

languages.

"earning Programming re!uires full effort and special approach in the way

it is learned and taught. Thus, this study focuses on the difficulties encountered in

C## programming language as percei$ed by sophomore students of %achelor of

&cience in Information Technology in Polytechnic 'ni$ersity of the Philippines

&anta osa Campus. This study will also help the teachers and students address

the problem in its early stage to a$oid other problems in the future.

Background of t! Stud"

The C## programming language was originally de$eloped by T*T %ell

"abs in +urray ill, ew ersey, starting in /010 by %2arne &troutstrup, as an

enhancement of the C "anguage. It is regarded as a middle-le$el language, as it

comprises a combination of both high-le$el and low-le$el language features. C##


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is a statically typed, compiled, general-purpose, case-sensiti$e, free-form

programming language, ob2ect-oriented and generic programming. The

"anguage is also widely used for teaching and research because it is clean

enough for successful teaching of basic concepts.

"earning how to make a computer program is a $ery hard work. There are

such things that one must work on when starting out with programming like

familiari3ing with the syntaes, sol$ing machine problems, debugging program

error, critical thinking, analysing the program flow and more. onestly speaking,

programming is inherently difficult to understand especially for no$ice

programmers. %ut practicing could impro$e one4s programming skills.

The researchers obser$ed that se$eral 5irst 6ear students in %achelor of

&cience in Information Technology failed their programming sub2ect at the end of

the semester. &o the researchers came up with this study to help and gi$e

possible solution in the difficulties eperienced or encountered by &econd 6ear

students of %achelor of &cience in Information Technology in their programming

sub2ects. In addition, the possible solutions that researchers may gi$e are online

tutorials and organi3ing group studies to help them impro$e their programming

skills.


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T!or!tica# $ra%!&ork

C## programming language is one of the first and ma2or sub2ects of an

Information Technology student. nd like all other sub2ect, some to most students

eperience difficulties in $arious topics or parts of the sub2ect. "earning is not a

simple thing. In cogniti$e psychology, learning something new re!uires a

comple array of mental processes such as attention, language used, memory,

perception, creati$ity, thinking and problem sol$ing skills. 7arious students can

differ in terms of how their brain interpret and analy3e information. This gi$es the

idea that different student learn differently or that different topics or sub2ects

affects how the student percei$es the sub2ect. This can also be affected by

$arious factors like a student4s en$ironment.

The theory of constructi$ism states that learners are not passi$e

recipients of information, but that they acti$ely construct their knowledge in

interaction with the en$ironment and through the reorgani3ation of their mental

structures. 8hen a student fails a !ui3 on a specific sub2ect, that student will find

the answer to that !uestion easier and will remember it through eperience.

There are also cases where the student only eperience difficult at the start of

the learning process then finds the sub2ect easier once they understand the

basics. 9ifferent students ha$e their own en$ironment and factors that differ from

that of their classmates. &ome howe$er, would find the same sub2ect difficult due

to the fact that the sub2ect is too hard or comple as it is.


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Stat!%!nt of t! Pro'#!%

This study aims to determine the difficulties encountered in C##

programming language as percei$ed by sophomore students of %achelor of

&cience in Information Technology in Polytechnic 'ni$ersity of the Philippines

&anta osa Campus, 5irst &emester, cademic 6ear :;/

/. 8hat is the profile of the respondents in terms of>/./ &ection?/.: @ender?

:. 8hat part of the C## programming language does the respondents

eperiencing difficulties in terms of>:./ 7ariable 9eclarations?:.: Initiali3ation of 7ariables?:.A Input and Butput &tream?:. Bperators?:.< Conditional &tatements?:.= "ooping?:.1 rray?:.D Pointers?:.0 7oid 5unction? and:./; 5ile andling.

A. 8hat are the common errors in C## programming language does the

respondents encountering difficulties in terms of>A./ In$alid symbols or keywords?A.: +ismatched symbols?A.A +issing symbols? andA. Ecessi$e symbols.


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H"(ot!)i)

The following null and alternati$e hypothesis was tested in this study>

The students are not eperiencing significant difficulties in manipulating

and utili3ing $ariable declaration, initiali3ation of $ariable, input and output

stream, operators, conditional statements, looping, array, pointers, $oid function.

The students are not encountering significant difficulties in programming

errors such as mismatched symbols, in$alid symbols, missing symbols, and

ecessi$e symbols.

The students are eperiencing significant difficulties in manipulating and

utili3ing $oid functions, pointers, file handling, arrays, and conditional statements.

The students are encountering significant difficulties in programming

errors such as mismatched symbols, in$alid symbols, missing symbols, and

ecessi$e symbols.

Significanc! of t! Stud"

This study is significant to students, parents, teachers, researchers, and

future researchers.

Stud!nt)


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This study will help them to think for some important ad2ustments to sol$e

their problem as well as to help them impro$e their capabilities towards learning

C## programming language.

Par!nt)

This study will help them to lessen their worries about the academic status

of their children.

T!ac!r)

This study will help them to ha$e an effecti$e strategy on teaching C##

programming language.

R!)!arc!r)

Through this study, the researchers would be able to find solutions in

handling the difficulties encountered in C## programming language as percei$ed

by the students.

$utur! R!)!arc!r)

This study will ser$e as guide for further studies to be conducted in the

future. This study will also pro$ide reference for them to get ideas and sources if

they are going to conduct the same study.

Sco(! and Li%itation


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This study focused mainly on determining the difficulties encountered in

C## programming language of sophomore students of %achelor of &cience in

Information Technology in Polytechnic 'ni$ersity of the Philippines.

The scope of this study is the sophomore students of %achelor of &cience

in Information Technology in Polytechnic 'ni$ersity of the Philippines in an etent

that they encounter difficulties in programming. The %achelor of &cience in

Information Technology :-/ consists of forty-se$en (1) students on the other

hand, the %achelor of &cience in Information Technology :-: which consists of

forty nine (0) students. ll in all, there were ninety si (0=) students in$ol$e in

this study.

CHAPTER II

RE*IE+ O$ RELATED LITERATURE AND STUDIES

This chapter presents the re$iew of the related literatures and studies

regarding topic about 9ifficulties encountered in C##programming language as

percei$ed by sophomore students of Polytechnic 'ni$ersity of the Philippines


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&anta osa Campus. t the outset of this study, the researchers are engaged in

gathering information related to the research studies and literatures that ha$e

bearing and significance to the study.

$or!ign Lit!ratur!

Bn the difficulty of learning to program, (Tony enkins :;;:) said that FIt is

sometimes argued that the students who Gnd programming difficult are simply

those for whom programming is difficultH. e also stated that there is nothing

inherently difficult in the sub2ect? the argument is simply that some students ha$e

no aptitude for programming. The re!uired skills often cited are problem sol$ing

ability and mathematical ability.

It is the foregoing connection that he also stressed that the link between

mathematical ability and programming is widely accepted, although its empirical

demonstration is !uestionable. In addition, there is little e$idence that either has

any signiGcant effect. recent study in Ireland (Pat %yrne and @erry "yons,

:;;/) has once hinted at some connection between programming aptitude and

eperience in mathematics and problem sol$ing. long with it, an eperiment at

the 'ni$ersity of "eeds (ohn 9a$y and Tony enkins, /000) designed to stream

a programming class based on the results of an aptitude test aimed at these two

skills but the Gnal results of the course showed no signiGcant correlation between

the calculated aptitude and the Gnal grade. Bther studies (@eneral E. E$ans and

+ark @. &imkin, /0D0) ha$e shown that no demographic factor is a strong

predictor of success in programming.


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+oreo$er, 9ianne agan and &elby +arkham (:;;;) said that it certainly

helps to ha$e some eperience of programming before starting a programming

course but this is not the same thing as aptitude. There eists programming

aptitude tests (PT) produced by I%+, but the e$idence for their effecti$eness is

inconclusi$e at best ("awrence . +a3lack, /0D;). If it is not possible to measure

aptitude for programming in some con$enient way, and if it is possible that

aptitude for programming does not e$en eist, the focus for the understanding

the difficulty of learning to program must turn in a more cogniti$e $iew of the

problem lies in the sub2ect itself (T. enkins, :;;:).

ccording to Jathryn 9. &loane and +arcia C. "inn (/0DD), programming,

then, is not a single skill. It is also not a simple set of skills? the skills form a

hierarchy, and a programmer will be using many of them at any point in time. s

cited by C. %ereiter and E. g (/00/), a student faced with learning a hierarchy

of skills will generally learn the lower le$el skills first, and will then progress

upwards. In the case of coding (one small part of the skill of programming) this

implies that students will learn the basics of synta first and then gradually mo$e

on to semantics, structure, and finally style. Teachers will be all too familiar with

the student who produces programs with no indentation, intending to indent it all

later, or without any comments, content to add these later (and only then

because there are marks for the comments in the assessment). 5urther, (Tony

enkins, :;;/) stressed that no eperienced programmer would work in this way,

and these are bad habits to fall into, but this is an ine$itable side effect of the

order in which programming skills are learned. This approach to learning is often


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reinforced by lectures that concentrate on the details of synta, and by tetbooks

that adopt much the same approach. This leads to the student who hopes to

gain an understanding of programming and plans to achie$e this by reading a

tetbook. Programming is learned by programming, not from books.

In sustenance to the foregoing, (+cJeithen Jatherine et.al, /0D/) alleged

that programming is not only more than a single skill? it also in$ol$es more than

one distinct process. t the simplest le$el the specification must be translated

into an algorithm, which is then translated into program code. In eperienced

programmers it is also possible to identify an intermediate process whereby the

algorithm is mapped to something resembling a recipe for the programme,

based on pre$ious eperience

+eanwhile, Tony enkins (:;;/) cited that the most difficult part of multiple

process of Programming is first, translating the specification into the algorithm.

This is also the most important, as it is crucial that a correct and efficient

algorithm is used as the basis of any coding. @i$en a correct algorithm the other

processes are essentially mechanical. Therefore, a student must master three

distinct processes. e also mentioned that teaching and learning, howe$er, can

concentrate on the low le$el issues of synta at the epense of the higher le$el,

more comple, and process of designing an algorithm. 8orse, any consideration

of algorithm design and efficiency can be relegated to another, apparently

unrelated, part of the course. In any case there is surely little point in lecturing

students on synta when they ha$e no idea of where and how to apply it.

Teachers will be familiar with students who can follow the lectures in the


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programming course, who can dissect and understand programs, but who are

totally incapable of writing their own program. They ha$e not mastered all the

processes? they can code, but they cannot produce an algorithm.

Loca# Lit!ratur!

n article published on [email protected] shows an inter$iew with Tim oseph

9umol, chief acker of Jalibrr. Tim is an acti$e competitor in programming

contests, such as C+ ICPC Philippine In$itational Programming Contest (/st),

C+ ICPC akarta egionals :;/: (0th) @oogle Code am :;// (ank 1D= of

ound :) and +anila 9e$ Challenge (%est Performance in the preliminaries).

In the inter$iew, he was asked about his $iew on Philippine tech and its

potential, he said that there might be more talent shortage in the upcoming years,

FI donKt think software de$elopment is $isible enough in the public consciousness

to attract top talent towards it. I also think that programming and computer

science education in the Philippines is se$erely lacking. IK$e heard of se$eral

schools that teach +& 8ord, PowerPoint, and Photoshop for their computer

classes, which misleads potential computer scientists as to what computer

science actually is.H e4s last statement to the !uestion was FI think without

proper training on the foundations of computer science, future programmers will

be ill prepared to face no$el problems and to truly ecel in their fieldsH.

long with it, an article was written by fydesign, a web design company

focused on web de$elopment of corporate websites, e-commerce and search

engine optimi3ation, about the !uality of 5ilipino programmers that applied for a


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2ob in their company. The articles shows that only < out of the D/ applicants ha$e

answered a problem in the inter$iew correctly and none of those < were able to

answer it efficiently. The skill e$aluation consists of two simple eams> 7ariable

&wapping to test your resourcefulness and &huffling to test the applicant4s coding

efficiency.

9ue to the result of the inter$iew, the inter$iewer or writer of the articles

narrowed the three problems, the first one was the +isconception on Eperience.

They say that eperience isn4t much of a factor since It4s with an a$erage of 1

years4 eperience can4t answer the two !uestions. It is stated in the article that if

a person will F@i$e a month to a new graduate with an outstanding knowledge in

programming concepts, problem-sol$ing or logic formulation skills and he can

e$en eceed your a$erage 1-year eperienced programmer.H The misconception

on the years of eperience is one factor the programmer slows down or e$en

stops learning.

The second problem was in the low !uality of education. big factor in the

worsening !uality of programmers is the institution. IT &chools focus more on

teaching specific programming languages and programming synta instead of

programming concepts. The author stated the learning the concept is more

important that hand4s on eperience. The last one was the lack of passion, FIt all

starts within you (programmer). In the first place, why take the Computer &cience

Course if all they want is design, photography, nursing, agriculture, housewife,

etc. They will ne$er succeed, and they will ne$er look for opportunities to


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impro$e. This is normally the beha$iour if what they do is not something that you

really lo$e.H

$or!ign Studi!)

The study of +atthew %utler and +ichael +organ (:;;1) introduces the

F"earning challenges faced by no$ice programming students studying high le$el

and low feedback conceptsH. This study is conducted at +onash 'ni$ersity in

&ingapore where %utler and +organ are both 5aculty of Information Technology

in the said 'ni$ersity. The researchers had shown the approimate arrangement

of the curriculum and list of the notional le$el of conceptual difficulty of the

sub2ect matter for the basis of their study. The researchers ha$e a total of /=1

respondents for their study.

+atthew %utler and +ichael +organ conclude the following statements>

n analysis of the sur$ey data has pro$ided a large number of insights into study

habits and challenges faced by no$ice students. It was clear that elements of

program design pro$ed to be among the most challenging aspects of introductory

programming curriculum. Indeed the elements of the curriculum of a highly

conceptual nature pro$ed to be acknowledged as the most challenging, both

from an understanding and implementation perspecti$e.

They further stated that a shift in acknowledged difficulty from

understanding to implementation could also be seen in almost all parts of the

curriculum. The only element not to eperience this shift was synta. This is an

aspect of programming curriculum that pro$ides a $ery high le$el of feedback to


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the students, possibly a reason why students feel a little more comfortable in

working with programming synta than their conceptual understanding of it.

In addition, the results presented are only a small part of more a thorough

analysis of the data that is in progress. The most important direction for future

research in$ol$ing further sur$eys of students will focus on areas of the

curriculum that contain concepts that ha$e a high le$el of conceptual difficulty

with the aim of clarifying eactly why students find these elements conceptually

difficult. &tudents ha$e commented on general topic areas only at this stage,

therefore further breakdown of curriculum topics, particularly those relating to

ob2ect oriented concept and design must be done to further in$estigate these

problems.

+oreo$er, the data pro$ides an insight into student problems with the

introductory programming curriculum. It is clear that issues relating to high

concept areas and the limited feedback opportunities that they afford must be

addressed. s feedback is inherently limited by programming en$ironments and

the like and the greatest opportunity for feedback comes from in-class

assistance, consideration should be gi$en to teaching methods that can pro$ide

feedback opportunities to the student both in and outside the classroom.

teaching method that can scaffold the student learning and guide them through a

process such as program design may be in$aluable to reducing the percei$ed

difficulty of high-le$el concepts in introductory programming units.


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In the $iew of the foregoing, a &tudy from the 9epartment of pplied

Computing, 'ni$ersity of 9undee, 9undee, 99/ titled F9ifficulties in

"earning and Teaching ProgrammingL7iews of &tudents and TutorsH by Iain

+ilne and @lenn owe (:;;:) from etherlands.

The respondents of the said study are the "earning and Teaching &upport

etwork ("T&) and the students of 9undee. The researchers conducted this

study to know the perspecti$e of teaching staffs ("T&) and learners (students of

9undee). The researchers conclude that the purpose of their study was to rank

programming concepts in order of difficulty, both from the students4 points of

$iew, and those of their lecturers.

The researchers belie$e that the results show that the most difficult topics

are so ranked because of the lack of understanding by the students of what

happens in memory as their programs eecute. Therefore, the students will

struggle in their understanding until they gain a clear mental model of how their

program is Mworking4Lthat is, how it is stored in memory, and how the ob2ects in

memory relate to one another. This pro$ides us with the moti$ation to design a

program $isuali3ation tool whose primary goal is to aid and enhance the

programmer4s understanding of what is happening in memory as their program

eecutes.

+eanwhile, the study of +ahmoud +. +hashi and li +. lakeel from the

Jingdom of &audi rabia and also a part of 9epartment of Computer &cience

5aculty of Computers and Information Technology at 'ni$ersity of Tabuk, Tabuk


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conducted a study about F9ifficulties 5acing &tudents in "earning Computer

Programming &kills at Tabuk 'ni$ersityH. Presented below are the results of this

study4s sur$ey.

The researchers conclude that learning to program is a comple task.

This paper has presented results from a case study and a !uestionnaire whose

purpose was to make sure that our students face difficulties in programming and

to rank programming issues in order of difficulties from students4 points of $iew.

The students face real difficulties in programming. The students lack the ability

to problem sol$ing and design at its different stages, and general programming

topics. +ost of the students lack skills e$en to analy3e a short piece of code. In

addition, students are not hard working and they lack understanding. Poorly

designed course, students4 weakness in English language, lack of practice and

eercises feedback, and lecturers insufficient skills in organi3ing the material and

lack of support by the uni$ersity (large number of students in labs, and a$ailability

of assistant lecturers), were seen as possible factors related to the difficulties.

5inally, one of the difficulties was the students4 le$el of maturity. This category

included students4 conduct> need for hard work, class and lab attendance, sol$ing

home works and eercises, getting feedback from the lecturers, and in$ol$ement

in class interacti$e $isuali3ations.

Loca# Studi!)

s cited by %ringula et al. (:;/:), programming is the core skills for

Information Technology students or from its simplest definition is an act of


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creating a program. owe$er, learning to program is difficult, it re!uires

eceptional perfection, strong foundation about knowledge on computers and

programming languages, programming tools and resources and formal methods.

+ore specifically, programming is an act of putting programming codes together

of a set of instruction that sol$es a specific problem.

Ineperienced programmers, also called no$ice programmers, ha$e

eperienced difficulties in making a program. It is important to study

programming errors because it can lead to a better understanding of problem-

sol$ing strategies. s a result, numerous studies ha$e been conducted to identify

the difficulties eperienced by no$ice programmers and the errors associated

with these difficulties (%ringula et al., (:;/:)).

There are two types of no$ice programmers according to %ringula et al.,

(:;/:), the stoppers and mo$ers. &toppers, from the world itself, stop when they

eperience difficulties and errors in program and mo$ers are those who are trying

to work on gi$ing a solution to the problem and e$entually they are the ones who

will achie$e a working program.

In the study of %ringula et al., (:;/:), the difficulties or errors fre!uently

committed by no$ice programmers are missing semi-colons, unmatched curly

braces, ecessi$e symbols like putting semi-colon after if-condition, inappropriate

naming of method names, illegal start of epressions, incompatible types and

irrele$ant naming of $ariables or constants.


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Bn the other hand, according to Tabanao et al., (:;;D) ineperienced

programmers encounter a $ariety of distributing problems. &he also said that In

ustralia, almost A


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participants, the sur$ey instruments use in this study, the collection and

procedure in gathering of data as well as the statistical treatment of the data.

R!)!arc D!)ign

The research design being used in this study is descripti$e research

method. 9escripti$e research deals with the description, recording, analysis, and

interpretation of the phenomena that already eist. The researchers used this

method because it is the most appropriate research method wherein, the

numerical data is based on the respondents4 responses for the items on the

difficulties encountered in C## programming language.

Po(u#ation and Sa%(#ing T!cni-u!

This study in$ol$es two sections of second year students taking up

%achelor of &cience in Information Technology in the Polytechnic 'ni$ersity of

the Philippines, &anta osa Campus. In particular, the sub2ects of the study are

the students in the following sections of the 5irst &emester, &.6. :;/ %&IT

:-/ and %&IT :-:.

&ince it is the purpose of the researchers to study the difficulties

encountered in C## Programming "anguage of the students, it is only

appropriated that the researchers employ the use of Total &ampling in which the

sample would be taken from the population of the said respondents. Total

sampling which otherwise be called total enumeration uses no method of

sampling or selecting respondents. s the term implies, all samples are included


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as respondents. This is a$ailed of in cases where there are only reasonable or

few number of samples.

5or an indi$idual to !ualify as respondent of the researcher4s study, the

indi$idual must possess the following !ualifications> The respondent should be a

&ophomore &tudent of %achelor of &cience in Information Technology? The

respondent should belong to any of the two sections of the said year le$el? The

respondent should be a student of Polytechnic 'ni$ersity of the Philippines &anta

osa Campus? The respondent eperienced the difficulties encountered in C##

programming language.

Bnly those students who ha$e met the abo$e !ualifications would be part

of the study, from which data would be gathered.

D!)cri(tion of (artici(ant)

The second year students of %achelor of &cience in Information

Technology of Polytechnic 'ni$ersity of the Philippines are the participants of this

study. The %achelor of &cience in Information Technology :-/ consists of forty-

se$en (1) students, twenty four (:) men and twenty three (:A) women. Bn the

other hand, the %achelor of &cience in Information Technology :-: which consist

of forty nine (0) students, thirty one (A/) men and eighteen (/D) women. In the

o$erall count, there were ninety si (0=) students in$ol$e in this study.

DataGat!ring Proc!dur!)


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The sur$ey !uestionnaire was conducted and distributed to the selected

respondents of Polytechnic 'ni$ersity of the Philippines, for which the

researchers intended to allot at least one (/) day for the sur$ey !uestionnaire

distribution and retrie$al of the same sur$ey forms from the same respondents.

The sur$ey !uestionnaires were collected and checked if all the items ha$e been

filled out and rated correctly by the respondents in order to minimi3e errors in

data analysis, thereby making the results to be obtained thereon more accurate,

reliable, and $alid. s a way of summari3ing the data collected, the researchers

tallied the data from the !uestionnaires as filled out by the respondents.

R!)!arc In)tru%!ntation

The instrument used for gathering the needed data for this study co$ers

research !uestionnaires with its three parts.

The first part pertains to the personal profile of the respondents as to

name, gender and section.

The second part of the researchers4 !uestionnaire deals with identifying

the specific C## topic that the respondents encountering difficulties in learning

the sub2ect. 5or this part of !uestionnaire the researcher used the likert scale

system because it is the most widely used approach of scaling responses in

sur$ey research. The respondents of the study should rate each item on the

difficulties encountered in C## programming language in the said scale system,

the ratings must ha$e the corresponding descriptions> < which is always? which

is often? A which is sometimes? : which is rarely or seldom? and / which is ne$er.


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The "ast part of the researchers4 !uestionnaire consists of items which will

pertain to the common error in C## programming language that the respondents

eperiencing difficulties. 5or this part of !uestionnaire, the respondents of the

study will also rate each item on the difficulties encountered in C## programming

language in a scale system.

Documents

Chapter 1 Wance