Education Commons^™

Reducing Withdrawal And Failure Rates In Introductory Programming With Subgoal Labeled Worked Examples, Lauren Margulieux, Briana B. Morrison, Adrienne Decker

Learning Sciences Faculty Publications

Background: Programming a computer is an increasingly valuable skill, but dropout and failure rates in introductory programming courses are regularly as high as 50%. Like many fields, programming requires students to learn complex problem-solving procedures from instructors who tend to have tacit knowledge about low-level procedures that they have automatized. The subgoal learning framework has been used in programming and other fields to breakdown procedural problem solving into smaller pieces that novices can grasp more easily, but it has only been used in shortterm interventions. In this study, the subgoal learning framework was implemented throughout a semester-long introductory programming course …