Effectively teaching coding standards in programming

Reviewer: Cecilia G. Manrique

Faculty members in most disciplines face the same dilemma about their teaching: they are concerned about imparting knowledge that will make students valuable to society in the future. Those who teach coding and programming are no different. This paper, although limited to the students of a particular institution, studying particular courses in programming, lays a framework for the study of the effectiveness of teaching and learning practices in the world of computing. The authors tried to find out from the students, through a questionnaire, whether they believed that coding standards were important in their programming courses; whether they complied with them; and what teaching strategies are effective, since they are used in industry. They also solicited suggestions for the further study of this issue. To start, the authors could have done a better job of editing their work, and ridding it of several grammatical errors. Beyond that superficial comment, the authors could improve on the study in other areas as well. One can start with the methodology, especially the sampling procedure, which leaves much to be desired. Only three courses, with a total of 57 students, were used in the survey. There was also a large number of nonnative English speakers in the group surveyed, which may or may not be reflective of the field itself. The study could have benefited from a pre-test of the survey questions, and this could very well serve as the pretest, since the authors seem to point out that, in this exploration, they are trying to generate, rather than test, a hypothesis. Some of the tables in the "Results and Analysis" section have a tendency to be confusing. It might benefit the reader if the tables were presented in such a way that further explanations were made available: which is raw data and which is already in a percentage format; how the results of open-ended questions may have results beyond 100 percent due to multiple responses; and so on. Much of this is standard writing practice, especially for studies of this nature. As it stands, the discussion of Table 2 leads to confusion, since the text does not reflect what the reader sees from the table, and readers will have to do their own calculations to arrive at what the authors are trying to say. It is quite obvious that program writing is not an easy task, and student responses reinforce this. However, despite the acknowledgement that coding standards are important, there seems to be a disconnect between theory and practice here. Students understand that coding standards are used to reduce programming errors, improve code quality, and build and enhance team communication. Students fail to follow coding standards in their work, however, because they do not have the time to get their assignments done, and therefore do not have the time to worry about such coding standards. Part of the problem stems from the students feeling that they have learned very little about coding standards from the two most common methods used to impart that knowledge, which is through lectures and the use of documentation. Students prefer the use of examples, and like to see the application of these examples in practice. As a result, the study proposes varied teaching strategies that make the most of these various learning techniques throughout a student's programming coursework, which will make them adopt and adhere to coding standards. The authors are aware of the limitations of their study. They also make suggestions for the direction they would like to go in the future, including taking a look at how different faculty members teach coding. It would be quite interesting to compare the perspectives of students and teachers in this regard. This might reveal valuable differences that can enhance the field further. Online Computing Reviews Service