Abstract

Two studies of factors affecting the programming performance of first- and second year Computer Science students were conducted. In one study students used GIL, a simple ap-plication framework, for their programming assignments in a second-semester programming course. Improvements in student performance were realized. In the other study, students submitted detailed logs of how time was spent on projects, along with their programs. Soft-ware metrics were computed on the students ’ source code. Correlations between student performance and the log data and software metric data were sought. No significant indica-tors of performance were found, even with factors that are commonly expected to indicate performance. However, results from previous research concerning variations in individual programmer performance and relationships between software metrics were obtained. ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I extend thanks to my advisor, Dr. Cliff Shaffer, for the many opportunities he provided. Many thanks also to Mr. Dwight Barnette for providing the forum for the research on using application frameworks. I am grateful to Dr. Sallie Henry for her guidance on using software metrics, as well as her patience and conversation.

Citations