Novice programmers inaccurately monitor the quality of their work and their peers' work in an introductory computer science course

A student’s ability to accurately evaluate the quality of their work holds significant implications for their self-regulated learning and problem-solving proficiency in introductory programming. A wide-spread cognitive bias that frequently impedes accurate self- assessment is overconfidence, which often stems from a misjudgment of contextual and task-related cues, including students’ judgment of their peers’ competencies. Little research has explored the role of overconfidence on novice programmers’ ability to accurately monitor their own work in comparison to their peers’ work and its impact on performance in introductory programming courses. The present study examined whether novice programmers exhibited a common cognitive bias called the "hard-easy effect", where students believe their work is better than their peers on easier tasks (overplace) but worse than their peers on harder tasks (underplace). Results showed a reversal of the hard-easy effect, where novices tended to overplace themselves on harder tasks, yet underplace themselves on easier ones. Remarkably, underplacers performed better on an exam compared to overplacers. These findings advance our understanding of relationships between the hard-easy effect, monitoring accuracy across multiple tasks, and grades within introductory programming. Implications of this study can be used to guide instructional decision making and design to improve novices’ metacognitive awareness and performance in introductory programming courses.