Analyzing Students' Behavior in a Beginner's Programming Course Marija Brkić, Higher Teaching Assistant Maja Matetić, Associate Professor Department of Informatics, University of Rijeka Radmile Matejčić 2, Rijeka, Croatia

Why are we doing this? Task 6 of the strategy of the University of Rijeka for the period : Pass rate increase for 2nd year enrollment to 75% The course pass rate in the academic year 2012/2013 was 61%. The course pass rate in the academic year 2011/2012 was 63%. We are facing a falling pass rate!!!

Course info Programming 1 mandatory course 1 st year of undergraduate study of Informatics C++ procedural programming 82 students in our case study LMS Moodle, supplemental instruction classes ActivityScores Online quizzes 25 Self-evaluation4 Labs9 Glossary2 Exam25 Activity6

Visualization as a pre-processing tool

Grade distribution

Avoiding examination

Repeating the course

Additional activity I

Additional activity II

Relationship with the final grade

Pre-processing Missing values for one part of activities have been replaced with minimum values Examples with the remaining missing values have been filtered out Additional attribute has been generated (Labs)

Data mining techniques Association Classification Clustering Outlier detection

Association rules NoAntecedentConfidenceLift 1Exam11,761 2Self-evaluation, Exam11,761 3Labs, Exam11,761 4Quizzes, Exam11,761 5Self-evaluation, Labs, Exam11,761 6Self-evaluation, Quizzes, Exam11,761 7Labs, Quizzes, Exam11,761 8Self-evaluation, Labs, Quizzes, Exam11,761 9Labs, Quizzes, Glossary0,951,677 10Self-evaluation, Labs, Quizzes, Glossary0,951,677 11Quizzes, Glossary0,911,601 12Self-evaluation, Quizzes, Glossary0,911,601 13Labs, Quizzes0,881,55 14Self-evaluation, Labs, Quizzes0,881,55 15Quizzes0,831,467 16Self-evaluation, Quizzes0,831,467

Classification rules

Clustering Activity 6 Exam 25 Self- evaluation 4 Glossary 2 Quizzes 25 Labs 9 Total 71 Items Cluster Cluster Cluster Cluster Cluster

Outlier detection ActivityExamSelf-evaluationGlossaryQuizzesLabsTotal Cluster Cluster Cluster Cluster Cluster Cluster Cluster Cluster Cluster Cluster

Student comments on newly introduced activities Official evaluation –I liked the labs because they force us to work on new materials continuously –I liked the labs because they encourage us to exercise regularly –professors gave us a lot of materials and organized everything perfectly – from labs to supplemental instruction Class evaluation –the labs made us work continuously –it is a good idea for getting scores, though the evaluation system should be less harsh and give partial credits –excellent idea set to practice perfectly –labs helped a lot for continuous engagement

Future work Time analysis (self-evaluation) Log analysis (forum, laboratory exercises, etc.) Classification issues

Conclusion We are actually not facing a falling pass rate!!!

Thank You for your attention!