Effects of different feedback strategies on academic achievements, learning motivations, and self-efficacy for novice programmers

Providing appropriate feedback is important when learning to program. However, it is still unclear how different feedback strategies affect learning outcomes in programming. This study designed four different two-step programming feedback strategies and explored their impact on novice programmers' academic achievement, learning motivations, and self-efficacy. A quasi-experimental study was conducted for four classes of freshmen (261 students, average age = 19) in computer science over six weeks. The students received four different feedback strategies including "programming template and correct code without comments", "programming template and correct code with comments", "flowchart and correct code without comments", and "flowchart and correct code with comments" during their C language programming course. The results showed that none of the feedback strategies can promote novice programmers' learning motivations and self-efficacy, but using "programming template and correct code without comments" can improve academic achievement of these novice programmers. Further analysis of students' reflection demonstrated that providing "programming template and correct code without comments" had advantage in helping students interpret code, thereby guiding the students to think comprehensively and face challenges positively, as well as promoting student success when learning to program.