Relationship between perceived problem‐solving skills and academic performance of novice learners in introductory programming courses

Past research has shown that student problem‐solving skills may be used to determine student final exam performance. This study reports on the relationship between student perceived problem‐solving skills and academic performance in introductory programming, in formative and summative programming assessment tasks. We found that the more effective problem solvers achieved better final exam scores. There was no significant difference in formative assessment performances between effective and poor problem solvers. It is also possible to categorize students on the basis of problem‐solving skills, in order to exploit opportunities to improve learning around constructivist learning theory. Finally, our study identified transferability skills and the study may be extended to identify the impact of problem solving transfer skills on student problem solving for programming. Lay Description Literature review: Problem‐solving skill (PSS) is a required skill for all, including students to analyse and find effective solutions to solve problems. PSS can be a significant predictor for course grade and to identify student study habits and attitudes that important to academic performance. It seems PSS and learning programming are interrelated but however are not yet deeply examined or little research has been conducted around the impact of student general PSS on novice assessment performance in programming. Our findings: The outcome of the analysis reported in this study was derived from a range of statistical methods, including mean with confidence interval, correlation coefficient, Kruskal–Wallis and Bonferroni post hoc correction methods. There is a significant difference in student performance in summative assessment tasks with effective PSS and students with poor PSS. However, our research findings on relationship between PSS and formative assessment tasks led us to surmise that in general PSS may not be considered as a significant factor to predict student performance in formative assessment tasks, although this should be analysed further to support our conclusion. This study results suggest that students with poor PSS may have issues with problem‐solving transferable skills. In addition, students who lack PSS would see the problems as a threat or difficult task to solve and have low confidence in their problem‐solving capabilities. Implications for educational practice and/or policy: The findings reveal that it is quite possible to categorize students on the basis o