Examining the intermediate programmers understanding of the learning process

Within computer science education, we have spent considerable effort on the introduction to the discipline (particularly to programming) and the teaching of novice programmers. However, we do not often think about the teaching and learning for the intermediate students. Having data about student's perceptions coming into a second year data structures course, it became of interest to systematically analyze the data to see what if any interesting patterns or results we could see in this information. In this paper, we present the results of the analysis of the open-ended questions at the end of the survey. The students were asked to identify a concept that they found particularly difficult and to tell us why. They were also asked to describe how they achieved success in learning a concept that they initially found difficult. We developed a system of thematic codes using a grounded theory approach on a sampling of the data, which we then applied to the entire data set. We uncovered patterns and trends in the student responses. During our analysis, we have uncovered that students are expressing blame for the lack of learning on themselves and instructors, pointing to perceived failures in the classroom environment and course structure, and are showing evidence of the understanding of the learning process. We conclude with some overall recommendations for how this findings could be operationalized to better understand the process for this intermediate learner.