Date of Award:

5-2024

Document Type:

Thesis

Degree Name:

Master of Science (MS)

Department:

Computer Science

Committee Chair(s)

John Edwards

Committee

John Edwards

Committee

Hamid Karimi

Committee

Shah Muhammad Hamdi

Abstract

Pausing behavior in introductory Computer Science (CS1) courses has been related to a student’s performance in the course and could be linked to a student’s cognitive load, or assignment difficulty. Having an objective measure of the cognitive load would be beneficial to course instructors as it would help them design assignments that are not too difficult. Two studies are presented in this work. The first study uses Cognitive Load Theory and Vygotsky’s Zone of Proximal Development as a theoretical framework to analyze pause times between keystrokes to better understand what types of assignments need more educational support than others. The first study reports the characteristics of eleven assignments, introduces a method to analyze pausing behavior, and investigates how pausing behavior changes with assignment characteristics (e.g., introducing new programming constructs, engaging creativity through Turtle graphics, etc). Evidence is found that pausing behavior does change based on the assignment type and that assignments with particular characteristics that cause students to break code into many small portions, and tie it all back together, may be more likely to have excessive demands on student working memory. Evidence is also found that assignment completion time may not be an accurate measure of assignment difficulty. The second study builds on the first study by validating whether the keystroke latency analysis corroborates results with a self-report questionnaire of cognitive load. The latency analysis does have a relation to self-reported cognitive load, but not in the manner anticipated. A higher proportion of shorter pauses is related to a higher cognitive load score, meaning students who spend more time typing have a higher cognitive load. Furthermore, assignments that take students longer to complete do have higher levels of cognitive load. Further research is needed to investigate the relation between keystroke latencies and cognitive load. However, both studies show assignment differentiation in pausing behavior between assignments, which suggests keystroke latency comparisons between assignments warrant more investigation.

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