Effects of preliminary preparation and revision on student performance in learning programming

A number of factors can affect student performance in learning programming. In this paper, the factors that have been taken into account are student attributes and how they affect student understanding in learning programming. A preliminary survey was done on the students who had taken the Java programming topic at Flinders University to investigate the effects on final results of attributes such as preliminary preparation and revision done by the students. The answers provided by the students in the survey were analyzed to investigate if there is a correlation between student performance and student effort in the form of preliminary preparation before going to the lectures, kind of material studied before going to the lecture, any preparation done before going to the laboratory, kind of preparation done before going to the lab, and revision done during the semester. The terms topic/course/subject are being used to represent the same course material at different universities, so they may have been used interchangeably in this paper.