Date of Award

5-2011

Degree Type

Thesis

Degree Name

Bachelor of Science (BS)

Department

Computer Science

Abstract

Students in introductory computer science courses often have difficulty with coding and problem solving, which results in bugs. These bugs cause both student frustration and attrition of many of our CS majors. In this work, we seek to understand the bugs that students encounter. We have two sources of data. First, we collect and analyze 450 bugs that were brought to our tutor lab by our CS 1 and CS2 students. Second, we analyze bugs in CS I homework assignments. The results show that the majority of the problems are due to problem solving skills, while the remaining problems involve a combination of logic and syntax problems for specific topics in the courses.

Comments

This work made publicly available electronically on September 16, 2011.

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Faculty Mentor

Dr. Renee C. Bryce