Abstract
Keeping students motivated for the duration of a course is easier said than done. Contextualizing student efforts with learning progress visualizations can help maintain engagement. However, progress can be visualized in many different ways. So far very little research has been done into which types of visualizations are most effective, and how different contexts affect the effectiveness of visualizations. We compare the effects of two different progress visualizations in an introductory programming course. Preliminary results show that older students prefer a visualization that emphasizes long-term progress, whereas younger students prefer a visualization that highlights progress within a single week. Additionally, students perform better and are more motivated when their visualization matches their age group’s preferred visualization. Possible explanations and implications are discussed.
O. Aarne and P. Peltola contributed equally to this work.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
References
Bennedsen, J., Caspersen, M.E.: Failure rates in introductory programming. ACM SIGCSE Bull. 39(2), 32–36 (2007)
Bull, S., Ginon, B., Boscolo, C., Johnson, M.: Introduction of learning visualisations and metacognitive support in a persuadable open learner model. In: Proceedings of the Sixth International Conference on Learning Analytics & Knowledge, pp. 30–39. ACM (2016)
Caprara, G.V., Fida, R., Vecchione, M., Del Bove, G., Vecchio, G.M., Barbaranelli, C., Bandura, A.: Longitudinal analysis of the role of perceived self-efficacy for self-regulated learning in academic continuance and achievement. J. Educ. Psychol. 100(3), 525 (2008)
Dweck, C.S.: Mindset: The New Psychology of Success. Random House Incorporated, New York (2006)
Dyckhoff, A.L., Zielke, D., Bültmann, M., Chatti, M.A., Schroeder, U.: Design and implementation of a learning analytics toolkit for teachers. J. Educ. Technol. Soc. 15(3), 58 (2012)
Holman, C., Aguilar, S., Fishman, B.: Gradecraft: what can we learn from a game-inspired learning management system? In: Proceedings of the Third International Conference on Learning Analytics and Knowledge, pp. 260–264. ACM (2013)
Jacovina, M.E., Snow, E.L., Allen, L.K., Roscoe, R.D., Weston, J.L., Dai, J., McNamara, D.S.: How to visualize success: presenting complex data in a writing strategy tutor. In: EDM, pp. 594–595 (2015)
Leppänen, L., Vapaakallio, L., Vihavainen, A.: Illusion of progress is moar addictive than cat pictures. In: Proceedings of the Third ACM Conference on Learning@Scale (L@S 2016), pp. 133–136, New York, NY, USA. ACM (2016)
Loboda, T.D., Guerra, J., Hosseini, R., Brusilovsky, P.: Mastery grids: an open-source social educational progress visualization. In: Proceedings of the 2014 Conference on Innovation & #38; Technology in Computer Science Education (ITiCSE 2014), p. 357, New York, NY, USA. ACM (2014)
Morrison, B.B., DiSalvo, B.: Khan academy gamifies computer science. In: Proceedings of the 45th ACM Technical Symposium on Computer Science Education, pp. 39–44. ACM (2014)
O’Donovan, S., Gain, J., Marais, P.: A case study in the gamification of a university-level games development course. In: Proceedings of the South African Institute for Computer Scientists and Information Technologists Conference, pp. 242–251. ACM (2013)
O’Rourke, E., Haimovitz, K., Ballweber, C., Dweck, C., Popović, Z.: Brain points: a growth mindset incentive structure boosts persistence in an educational game. In: Proceedings of the SIGCHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems, pp. 3339–3348. ACM (2014)
Park, Y., Jo, I.-H.: Development of the learning analytics dashboard to support students’ learning performance. J. UCS 21(1), 110–133 (2015)
Santos, J.L., Govaerts, S., Verbert, K., Duval, E.: Goal-oriented visualizations of activity tracking: a case study with engineering students. In: Proceedings of the 2nd International Conference on Learning Analytics and Knowledge, pp. 143–152. ACM (2012)
Steinberg, L., Graham, S., O’Brien, L., Woolard, J., Cauffman, E., Banich, M.: Age differences in future orientation and delay discounting. Child Dev. 80(1), 28–44 (2009)
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2017 Springer International Publishing AG
About this paper
Cite this paper
Aarne, O., Peltola, P., Leinonen, A., Leinonen, J., Hellas, A. (2017). Adolescent and Adult Student Attitudes Towards Progress Visualizations. In: Dagienė, V., Hellas, A. (eds) Informatics in Schools: Focus on Learning Programming. ISSEP 2017. Lecture Notes in Computer Science(), vol 10696. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-71483-7_2
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-71483-7_2
Published:
Publisher Name: Springer, Cham
Print ISBN: 978-3-319-71482-0
Online ISBN: 978-3-319-71483-7
eBook Packages: Computer ScienceComputer Science (R0)