Assessment of the Influence of Programming Class Sizes in the Students' Performance

Abstract


The teaching and learning process of programming education is complex and impacted by numerous variables. Teachers and researchers argue that the high number of students in programming classes negatively influences learning. This topic was investigated in different international contexts, and a lack of data regarding the Brazilian context was found, which is expected to be mitigated with the present study. Therefore, this work aims to provide statistical evidence on this topic by analyzing the academic data of 206 students enrolled in a technical computing course. No statistically significant difference between students’ performance was found, regardless of the number of students in the analyzed classes. The implications for the programming teaching and learning process are discussed.
Keywords: programming learning, class sizes, students per laboratory

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Published
2021-07-20
SILVA, Leonardo. Assessment of the Influence of Programming Class Sizes in the Students' Performance. In: WORKSHOP ON COMPUTING EDUCATION (WEI), 29. , 2021, Evento Online. Anais [...]. Porto Alegre: Sociedade Brasileira de Computação, 2021 . p. 268-277. ISSN 2595-6175. DOI: https://doi.org/10.5753/wei.2021.15918.