The challenge of teaching students the value of programming best practices

We investigate the benefits of our programming assignments in correlation to what the students learn and show in their programming solutions. The assignments are supposed to teach the students to use best practices related to program comprehension, but do the programming assignments clearly show the benefits of best practices? We performed an experiment that showed no significant result which suggests that the assignments did not emphasise the value of best practices. As lecturers, we understand that constructing assignments that match the sought after outcome in students learning is a complex task. The experiment provided valuable insights that we will use to improve the assignments to better mirror best practices.