Abstract:
In 2001 the “McCracken group”, through a multi-institutional study, concluded that many students finishing their introductory programming
courses could not program due to a lack of problem solving skills. In 2004 Lister established that students have a fragile grasp of skills to
read and interpret code. Humphrey suggests that educators must shift their focus from the programs that the students create to the data of the
processes the students use. This paper addresses the problem of poor performing students through an investigation of their quality appraisal
techniques (QATs) and development processes. Firstly, a survey was conducted to determine the current software development practices used
by a group of undergraduate Computer Science students. Numeric data collected revealed that the current practices used by the majority
of students would not be sufficient to produce quality programs. Secondly, a case study was conducted to gain a deeper understanding of
the various factors that are likely to influence students’ intention to use QATs. Analysis of numeric data collected through a survey revealed
that students’ intentions to use QATs are driven by ease of use, compatibility, usefulness, result demonstrability, subjective norm and career
consequences. Thirdly, an experiment was conducted to determine students’ perceptions on the use of process measurement data to improve
their current software development practices. Analysis of numeric and narrative data revealed that performance measurement data could
provide students with useful information to adopt proper development practices.
