HOW WELL DO THE RESULTS FROM PRACTICAL COURSEWORK COMPARE WITH THE RESULTS FROM THEORETICAL EXAMS IN COMPUTER PROGRAMMING COURSES?

This paper investigates the relationship between introductory programming students’ ability to program and their theoretical understanding in computer programming by measuring how their performance in practical coursework matches with their performance in theoretical exams. A rigorous study was undertaken with 400 students who were all registered on an introduction to a C++ programming course for a 13 week period. The study involved the completion of two sets of practical coursework and two sets of theoretical exams which were all complementary to each other. In addition to the correlations amongst the practical and theoretical assessment, this study also explores whether or not the department the students studies in has an impact on their success in computer programming. The findings indicate that the theoretical exam results and the practical coursework outcome significantly correlated with each other which provides strong evidence that those students who did well in their practical coursework also did well in theoretical exams.