Games, stories, or something more traditional: The types of assignments college students prefer
Document Type
Conference Proceeding
Department
Computer Science
Conference Title
SIGCSE'08 - Proceedings of the 39th ACM Technical Symposium on Computer Science Education
Date of Presentation
12-16-2008
Abstract
In this paper, we describe a study designed to examine the types of projects college students prefer in an introductory programming course. For three assignments in a course, students were given a choice among three project types: a game, a "choose your own adventure" story, and a more traditional project (such as a problem from the text book). During the semester, 35 of 49 projects submitted by students were the game option (71.4%), with only two projects submitted that were stories. A statistical analysis revealed that student choices on assignments did not appear to be related to their overall performance in the course. On an end of term survey, students commented that they often chose projects that had all requirements clearly explained, and avoided assignments that were open-ended in nature.
First Page
138
Last Page
142
DOI
10.1145/1352135.1352184
Recommended Citation
Cliburn, D. C.,
&
Miller, S. M.
(2008).
Games, stories, or something more traditional: The types of assignments college students prefer.
Paper presented at SIGCSE'08 - Proceedings of the 39th ACM Technical Symposium on Computer Science Education.
https://scholarlycommons.pacific.edu/soecs-facpres/386
