Determination of Project Topics

Once assigned to our groups in Team-Based Application Programming we were given the task of researching what key concepts new programmers had a hard time understanding. Stated below is an excerpt from our paper describing our major research method:

During a regularly scheduled Java programming class, students were split into groups of two and three, and assigned an interviewer. Students were varied in ages, and provided many explanations on why they were taking this course. As it is a required course for the Information Technology (IT) and Network Security and System Administration (NSSA) degrees, students found in this class were either taking the course for the first time, retaking the course, transferred into Rochester Institute of Technology, or taking the course after failed attempts at taking a higher Java programming course. Attending this class session provided us with a diverse pool of responses.

Our group interviewed a total of nine students. It was our aim to make the students feel comfortable by building a repertoire in order for them to provide useful and honest responses. At the end of the day, our team came together and reported our findings, in addition to articles with relevant topics in order to further understand college-wide programming issues.