Work-in-Progress: Closing the Gaps: Diversity in Programming Education

Abstract

In programming education for non-computer science students, high diversity exists among our students, including gender, culture, age, educational background, and work experience. Introductory programming courses traditionally face high drop-out rates and poor performance, and students often perceive learning to program as difficult. Current research on diversity in programming education has primarily focused on gender differences, thus neglecting the influence of other diversity dimensions on students’ performance. The project Diversity in Programming Education (DIPE) aims to fill this gap by identifying how heterogeneous groups of students can be best supported. Based on our findings, we develop a didactic concept with accompanying teaching and learning material to support different diversity dimensions actively in programming education. The concept includes competence models for measuring competences and individual learning paths. To support a flat learning curve further in university programming courses in the future, we closely work with schools and educational centres for teachers to integrate algorithmic thinking into school curricula. We empirically evaluate our concept using a mixed methods approach. In particular, we will explore the effects of our concept in our programming course and will investigate the value of these effects as perceived by lecturers and students.