Introspection as a Condition of Students’ Self-management in

Programming Training

Liudmyla I. Bilousova

1 a

, Oleksandr H. Kolgatin

2 b

, Larisa S. Kolgatina

3 c

and

Olena H. Kuzminska

4 d

Kryvyi Rih State Pedagogical University, 54 Gagarin Ave., Kryvyi Rih, 50086, Ukraine

Simon Kuznets Kharkiv National University of Economics, 9a Science Ave., Kharkiv, 61166, Ukraine

H. S. Skovoroda Kharkiv National Pedagogical University, 29 Alchevskyh Str., Kharkiv, 61002, Ukraine

National University of Life and Environmental Sciences of Ukraine, 15 Heroiv Oborony Str., Kyiv, 03041, Ukraine

Keywords:

Introspection, Self-Management, Students, Independent Work, Training in Programming.

Abstract:

The paper is devoted to the study of types of managing the student’s educational activity. The educational

discipline “Practicum of problem solving in informatics” for students of third year study, future teachers of

informatics have been chosen for realising pedagogical conditions of computer-oriented management of stu-

dents’ educational activity. Progressive turn from direct management through co-management, subsidiary

management to self-management was the main idea of designing the courseware. The information and com-

munication educational environment has been based on the platform of learning management system Moodle.

The Workshop elements of Moodle played the central role in management of students’ educational activity.

The results of our pedagogical observation and assessment showed the efﬁciency of suggested approach. Ad-

ditionally, there were shown the lack of students’ competency in time planning and introspection on the base

of the experimental data.

1 INTRODUCTION

1.1 Statement of the Problem

Informatisation of the educational process has led to

the creation of information and communication ed-

ucational environment in institutions of higher edu-

cation and signiﬁcantly inﬂuenced the goals, content,

methods and means of students’ educational activity,

forms of its organization. The use of modern pow-

erful computer tools for implementation of manage-

ment tasks in educational process means the transition

to a new type of management – computer-oriented,

which can provide the personalisation and not only

serve the achievement of learning goals, but also help

the student to become the active participant of such

management, that is the subject of self-management.

The use of information and communication technolo-

gies is connected with developing innovative manage-

https://orcid.org/0000-0002-2364-1885

https://orcid.org/0000-0001-8423-2359

https://orcid.org/0000-0003-2650-8921

https://orcid.org/0000-0002-8849-9648

ment practices and introducing these technologies to

educational process. There are many theoretical and

practical studies in this ﬁeld, but it remains relevant

today.

1.2 Analysis of Previous Research

One of the most fundamental analysis of theoretical

and methodological aspect according to the manage-

ment of the independent learning activity of students

of pedagogical higher educational institutions was

suggested by Malykhin (Malykhin, 2009). Recently,

appropriate methodical systems have been introduced

into the practice of the educational process to pro-

vide for computer-based management of students’ ed-

ucational activity. Information and communication

educational technologies, especially, cloud technolo-

gies that transform education have been analysed ac-

cording to results of the “Cloud Technologies in Ed-

ucation” workshop (Kiv et al., 2020). Lavrentieva

et al. (Lavrentieva et al., 2019) have analysed new

methods of the organization of students’ independent

study activities together with the use of ICT and tools.

142

Bilousova, L., Kolgatin, O., Kolgatina, L. and Kuzminska, O.

Introspection as a Condition of Students’ Self-management in Programming Training.

DOI: 10.5220/0010922000003364

In Proceedings of the 1st Symposium on Advances in Educational Technology (AET 2020) - Volume 1, pages 142-153

ISBN: 978-989-758-558-6

Computer-based tools of supporting students’ inde-

pendent experimental activity in the process of learn-

ing quantum physics have been proposed by Velychko

and Shulga (Velychko and Shulga, 2018). Manage-

ment of students’ educational activity was provided

as support in instrument setup, measurements, results

processing. Vlasenko et al. (Vlasenko et al., 2019)

have designed and are developing an educational site

“Differential Equations” to support students’ educa-

tional activity. The site contains theoretical frame-

work, practical classes, provides consultations on-

line and via e-mail, testing, discussion cases, forum

and provides support for the teaching of the course

and solving practical problems of research charac-

ter by students. Podlasov et al. (Podlasov et al.,

2017) have proposed elements of blended training in

physics at a technical university on the basis of pro-

grammed learning (students study new material or

ﬁxate their knowledge) in the Moodle system with

the help of the element Lesson. Kyslova and Slo-

vak (Kyslova and Slovak, 2016) developed methods

of using the mobile learning environment in study of

higher mathematics by future electromechanical en-

gineers. These methods are based on the complex ap-

plication of computer tools: using Google Apps Ed-

ucation Edition (texts, diagrams, links, videos); exe-

cution of practical tasks and research with developed

models in cloud-oriented GeoGebra and CoCalc envi-

ronments; application of Drawings for generalization

and systematization of concept connections, Forms

for testing, CoCalc for task generation. Tools inte-

gration was provided with using Classroom, Calendar

was used for scheduling training activities. Triakina

et al. (Triakina et al., 2018) analysed E-learning in-

struments for self-education and have suggested the

ways of this tools implementation into professional

training. Methods and technologies for the quality

monitoring of electronic educational resources were

analysed by Kravtsov (Kravtsov, 2015). Pinchuk et al.

(Pinchuk et al., 2019) stressed ﬂexibility and adapt-

ability of pedagogical systems as principals of a sub-

stantial transformation of the education system. Re-

alisation of these principals needs in comprehensive

pedagogical diagnostics and prognosis in educational

process. A methodical system of computer-oriented

management of independent work of future teachers

in the process of learning computational methods (nu-

merical methods) was developed by Bilousova et al.

(Bilousova et al., 2019). This system is based on

the use of specially designed computational models

in MathCAD environment and assumes learning man-

agement system Moodle to support for management

of students’ independent work. It should be noted

that development of the educational process on the ba-

sis of its reorientation to students’ self-management

their own cognitive activity not only contributes to

enhancing the autonomy of students, but also gives

the education of personal signiﬁcance. By determin-

ing the individual trajectory of educational and cogni-

tive activity of each student on the basis of the max-

imum consideration of his individual and cognitive

abilities, the necessary prerequisites for the forma-

tion of his skills of systematic and continuous pro-

fessional self-improvement are created. Useful anal-

ysis in this direction were suggested by Kruk and

Zhuravleva (Kruk and Zhuravleva, 2010). Santos

et al. (Santos et al., 2012) suggested a tool for em-

powering students to reﬂect on their activity. Spe-

cial analysis of a way and steps for transforming stu-

dents’ independent work management from direct to

self-management was suggested by Bilousova et al.

(Bilousova et al., 2020). This theoretical analysis was

implemented in training process of future teachers of

informatics that gave authors possibility to see binds

between students’ introspection and competence in

self-management. Self-regulated learning were dis-

cussed by Nussbaumer et al. (Nussbaumer et al.,

2012). They stressed that the cognitive and meta-

cognitive activities are not directly measurable, so the

measurable actions should be mapped to cognitive

and meta-cognitive learning activities (Nussbaumer

et al., 2012). But known results observed in our re-

view are not enough to built completed model of a

student for pedagogical prognosis.

1.3 Objectives

The potential of computer-oriented management of

students’ educational activity is not fully realized, ac-

cording to the above analysis. It actualizes the study

of pedagogical conditions, the introduction of which

improves the effectiveness of such management. We

should ﬁnd the methods to contribute students in ob-

taining better educational results and in acquisition of

the active personal position in managing their own in-

dependent work. We also need in some approaches to

measuring the parameter of the model of a student for

pedagogical prognosis and effective choosing appro-

priate type of management. This task is complex and

very complicated, so it can not be solved in a single

study. Our work is directed to solving this problem

by studying some elementary issues of student model

and correlation some its parameters with efﬁciency of

some management type.

The purpose of this paper is theoretical and prac-

tical study of introspection as a pedagogical condi-

tion of effective computer-oriented management of

students’ educational activity in information and com-

Introspection as a Condition of Students’ Self-management in Programming Training

143

munication educational environments.

2 THEORETICAL FRAMEWORK

There are various approaches to deﬁning the concept

of management in pedagogical systems in the psycho-

pedagogical literature. Thus, Markov (Markov, 1978)

views management as an organization of purpose-

ful actions, Itelson (Itelson, 1964) sees management

as the actions that are directed to achieving a previ-

ously set goal. Korshunov (Korshunov, 1987) con-

siders that management is the organization of a pro-

cess that ensures the achievement of a predetermined

goal. Filippov (Filippov, 1980) considers manage-

ment as the purposeful inﬂuence of the subject on

the object and the change of this object as a result

of inﬂuence. Nechaev (Nechaev, 1992) speaks about

management as purposeful regulation of processes. In

some studies, management is seen as an element of

some system that connects all its elements and sub-

ordinates them to the goal. Thus, Yakunin (Yakunin,

1988) sees the essence of management in the interac-

tion of the student and the teacher, which is carried

out in accordance with the set goals and is aimed at

activating the student’s activity in the learning process

and achieving the required results. We agree with all

of the above statements, which highlight certain fea-

tures of management and conﬁrm the relationship be-

tween management and activities. It is also deﬁned

by the new interpretative dictionary of the Ukrainian

language: “To manage - 1. To direct activity, work

of someone, something; be led by someone, some-

thing; manage. 2. To direct the course of a process,

to inﬂuence the development, the state of something”

(Yaremenko and Slipushko, 1999). On the basis of

this analysis of pedagogical research on the problem,

the essence of managing student’s educational activ-

ity is determined as realization of interaction of a stu-

dent and a teacher, which is aimed at activating stu-

dent’s activity in the educational process and achiev-

ing the educational goals. As a result of this interac-

tion, the social and cognitive experience of the stu-

dent changes, which acquires the trait of independent,

purposeful activity in order to become ready to solve

future professional problems.

The development of information and communica-

tion technologies creates prerequisites for improving

the efﬁciency of managing students’ educational ac-

tivity in modern higher education process. Given the

new role of the teacher as a tutor, a moderator, who

provides support to the student in choosing and build-

ing an individual educational trajectory, the new qual-

ity of management is seen in its variability, coordina-

tion of management actions with individual capabili-

ties, needs and requests of the student. This manage-

ment is directed to help the student to get knowledge

and skills according to the curricula, but also to in-

creasing involvement of the student in managing their

own educational activity, in the progressive transi-

tion from direct management to co-management, sub-

sidiary management and further to self-management.

ICT-oriented management of student’s educational

activity is a multi-stage process (collection of infor-

mation, statement of objectives, decision-making, im-

plementation of the decision, monitoring and evalua-

tion of results, adjustments) that is implemented with

the use of appropriate ICT tools at each stage. Im-

plementing student’s self-management with the use of

modern, powerful computer management tools means

moving to a new type of management – computer-

oriented, capable to provide higher quality of man-

agement. This new quality can not be proved theoret-

ically, but it was observed in educational process. We

have analysed our previous empirical work [hide for

peer review] and can highlight the most important fea-

tures of computer-oriented management of student’s

educational activity:

• adaptability that is based on detailed data on the

level of knowledge and skills required for inde-

pendent work, as well as on the dynamics of their

acquisition;

• ﬂexibility that assumes gradual involving of a stu-

dent in improving management of his/her own in-

dependent work through the transition from di-

rect management to co-management, subsidiary

management and self-management on the base of

analysis of the accumulated experience of using

a certain type of self-management and data on its

effectiveness;

• timeliness, which is provided by the opportunity

to monitor the process of the task execution and

the availability of communication resources, that

allows timely and targeted assistance and advice

to the student, based on the accumulation and

analysis of data on the progress and effectiveness

of his educational activity;

• transparency, which involves openness of require-

ments to the results of the educational activity, cri-

teria for the evaluation, rating indicators of stu-

dent’s educational achievements;

• objectivity in making managerial decisions that is

based on objective testing data and tracking the

effectiveness of the student’s educational activity.

Pedagogical conditions for the effective imple-

mentation of the said management in the educational

AET 2020 - Symposium on Advances in Educational Technology

144

Table 1: Activities of the subjects of the educational process at different management types on the stage of implementation of

the decision.

Type of management

Direct management Co-management Subsidiary management Self-management

The teacher sets a task for

the student

The teacher discusses a

task with the student

The student chooses a task

from a database

The student formulates a

task and coordinates it

with the teacher

The teacher sets the meth-

ods of the task execution

The teacher discusses the

methods of the task exe-

cution with the student

The student chooses the meth-

ods of the task execution from

suggested by the teacher

The student determines

the methods of the task

execution independently

The teacher suggests nec-

essary resources to for the

student

The teacher suggests nec-

essary resources to for the

student

The student chooses necessary

resources from the given re-

source base

The student determines

the necessary resources

independently

The teacher gives the ex-

ample of the correct oper-

ation sequence

(detailed instruction)

The teacher gives the

common schema of the

operation sequence

(framework instruction)

The student determines the

operation sequence indepen-

dently

The student determines

the operation sequence

independently

The teacher provides cur-

rent correction of the task

execution process

The teacher adjusts the

process of completing the

task, if necessary

The teacher adjusts the pro-

cess of completing the task, if

the student ask him for help

The student controls the

task completing process

independently

The teacher provides the

student with current sys-

tematic help

The teacher helps the stu-

dent, if necessary

The teacher helps, if the stu-

dent asks

The teacher helps, if the

student asks

The teacher gives the pat-

tern of report to sum-

marising obtained results.

The student acts accord-

ing the model

The teacher gives the plan

of report to summarising

obtained results.

The student acts accord-

ing the plan

The teacher gives the require-

ments to report and summaris-

ing obtained results.

The student produces the anal-

ysis of obtained results inde-

pendently

The student coordinates

the form of report with

the teacher and produces

the analysis of obtained

results independently

process have been substantiated on the basis of anal-

ysis of the new opportunities for managing the stu-

dent’s educational activity:

• designing of information and communication ed-

ucational environment, which contains variation

educational-informative, instructive-methodical,

software-instrumental, as well as communication

resources for organization and support of the stu-

dent’s educational activity;

• using a system that automates the collection, ac-

cumulation and analytical processing of perfor-

mance indicators of student’s educational activity;

• ensuring the readiness of all participants in

the educational process to implement computer-

oriented management of the student’s educational

activity.

The above pedagogical conditions was checked in the

comparative pedagogical experiment in the PhD the-

sis of one of the present paper authors. The results

of this experiment have proved that abidance of sug-

gested pedagogical conditions contributes increasing

the efﬁciency of computer-oriented management of

independent work of future teachers in the process of

their natural and mathematical training.

Only comprehensive application of all condi-

tions ensures the effective management. The im-

plementation stage of ICT-oriented student’s educa-

tional activity management is the key stage, when

the student actively takes part in this management

as the person of educational process. Understand-

ing the character of interconnections between the

teacher and the student (table 1) is very important

for developing the ﬂexible management based on

different types of management (direct management,

co-management, subsidiary management, and self-

management) (Bilousova et al., 2020).

3 METHODOLOGY OF

EMPIRICAL RESEARCH

We have realised the above approach to management

of students’ educational activity in the students’ train-

ing in programming. The information and commu-

nication educational environment has been based on

Introspection as a Condition of Students’ Self-management in Programming Training

145

the platform of learning management system Moo-

dle. It contained built-in communication resources

as well as reference to educational-informative re-

sources and instructive-methodical materials accord-

ing to programming the basic algorithmic construc-

tions for organization and support of the students’ ed-

ucational activity.

The ﬁrst stage of empirical work was realised in

practicum of problem solving in informatics for future

teachers of informatics. 10 students took part in this

work. The software-instrumental resources (Eclipse

environment and the tools of common information

technologies) were present at every students’ com-

puter. The leading information channel was the inter-

active lectures, where the elements of programs have

been analysed in details. The educational activity of

the students at this interactive lectures were managed

directly, because the students did the notes in the form

of parallel development the suggested and analysed

algorithms as Java programs. Interactive parts of this

lectures involved some students in co-management of

educational activity, but some of them were passive

and continue execute the tasks in direct management

regime, using the ready fragments of code and ori-

entating only at the teacher’s commands in the time

planning. The students’ notes in the form of devel-

oped and tested programs became the instructional

materials for management students’ independent ac-

tivity in problem solving.

There were created 5 Workshop elements of ac-

tivity in the course in Moodle environment and sug-

gested 5 series of individual tasks for each student ac-

cording to the such topics: linear algorithms; branch-

ing; cycles; one-dimensional arrays; two-dimensional

arrays. There were 10 variants of tasks, so each stu-

dent obtained individual variant. The example of full

task series for one of these variants is shown in ta-

ble 2. Every of this series contained three tasks of dif-

ferent levels. Student should complete one of this task

for passing or all tasks for high grade. The ﬁrst task

assumed the direct (but distance) management of stu-

dents’ educational activity, because this task was very

similar to the one was analysed at lecture. The second

task assumed the direct or co-management. This task

was based on some of analysed algorithms but was

not fully similar. Students could solve this problem

using only the lecture notes (direct management). But

sometimes students needed in additional information

for solving the problem. They could ask the teacher

or colleagues personally or using the built-in tools

of Moodle (co-management) as well as to use some

additional information resources (subsidiary manage-

ment). The third task was difﬁcult and assumed us-

ing the algorithmic constructions that were not anal-

ysed at lectures. Students had to discuss this problem

with the teacher (co-management) or independently

use the additional information resources (subsidiary

management). So, the students independently and in-

tuitively made the decision on using some of above

type of management of their own educational activity

for each task according to their educational achieve-

ments and skills of independent activity.

Students uploaded the results of the tasks execu-

tion to the Workshops. It should be the correct pro-

gram with the author’s tests to prove it correctness.

The second phase of students’ activity in Workshops

was to check and grade the works of the colleagues –

assessment phase. Only the students, who have ex-

ecuted the ﬁrst stage of the task and have submitted

their works, could take part in the assessment. The

assessment process is creative activity, but its man-

agement was direct, because the students assessed ac-

cording to the simple instruction: +1 point, if the pro-

gram is submitted and perform the required results;

+1 point, if the program correctly work with the au-

thor’s tests, +1 point, if the reviewer cannot suggest

any tests to indicate the bugs. Grading of the assess-

ment phase was produced automatically by compar-

ison of student’s given grades with other reviewers’

grades for corresponding works. Teacher also took

part in the assessment as a reviewer with weight co-

efﬁcient of 10. This procedure represents our method

of evaluation. So, the student’s grade for submission

is a sum of the grades for three tasks and the grade

for each task is from 0 to 3 as it was described above.

The student’s grade for assessment was evaluated au-

tomatically with a built-in algorithm of learning man-

agement system Moodle for the Workshop element.

The teacher carried out pedagogical observation

during the course. Students, who did not submit their

works in time, passed each task at additional time in

the form of discussion of the results with the teacher

personally. Such results were not analysed in this

study.

There was the ﬁnal test for future informatics

teachers at the end of the course. This ﬁnal test took

place in a classroom at ﬁxed time under the teacher

observation. The students were suggested to design

three programs of different difﬁculty levels with us-

ing algorithmic elements of different topics. The stu-

dents, who completely designed the program for the

satisfactory level could obtain up to 74 grade point.

In case of errors the grade was decreased. When the

satisfactory level was passed successfully, the student

was suggested with a task for sufﬁcient level (up to

89 grade points). And ﬁnally, a task for high level

was suggested. Some students could not satisfactory

pass this test in ﬁxed time. They had additional at-

AET 2020 - Symposium on Advances in Educational Technology

146

Table 2: Example of tasks set for workshops.

Topic The First Task The Second Task The Third Task

Linear Al-

gorithms

Develop a program for calculat-

ing the income of a family of 4

people for the speciﬁed income of

each family member

Develop a program to calcu-

late the rest when buying n

units of goods at a price of

dollars x

cents, if the box

ofﬁce submitted y

dollars y

cents

Develop a program to calculate

the amount of money to buy n CD

disks, if each individual CD disk

costs x hryvnia, and a box of ten

CD disks is sold at a discount of y

percent

Branching Develop a program to test knowl-

edge in the history of science ac-

cording the following scenario: 1)

the computer submits the task:

“Year of birth of Serhii Oleksi-

iovych Lebediev – an outstand-

ing scientist, under whose leader-

ship the ﬁrst computer in the con-

tinental Europe was built”; 2) the

user enters the answer as an inte-

ger number; 3) the computer com-

pares the user’s answer with the

correct one (1902) and informs

the user about the result of the

check.

Develop the program which

on the set air temperature rec-

ommends clothes:

• less than minus ten –

“coat”;

• not less than minus ten

but less than plus ten -

“jacket”;

• not less than ten but

less than eighteen –

“sweater”;

• eighteen and above –

“does not matter”

Develop a program that deter-

mines whether the brick will pass

into a rectangular hole, according

to the speciﬁed size of the hole

(a, b) and the brick (x, y, z). Input

may be not sorted in ascending or-

der.

Cycles In the treasury of the fairy king-

dom are jugs of living water. All

jugs are numbered sequentially.

The amount of water in each jug is

determined by the magic formula

, where i is the number of the

jug. Develop a program that for

given numbers i

and i

ﬁnds the

total amount of water in the jugs

from i

to i

inclusive.

For n numbers entered from

the keyboard, compare the

count of positive and nega-

tive numbers

For n numbers entered from the

keyboard, ﬁnd the length of the

maximum series of numbers that

are ordered in ascending order.

Do not use the array

One-

Dimensi-

onal Array

Processing

Replace the surnames “Danko”

with “Tanko” in given array of

surnames

Delete items that are equal

and next to each other from

given array, which contains a

list of company names

Two arrays of surnames are spec-

iﬁed. Elements with the same in-

dex deﬁne the ancestor – descen-

dant pair. Develop a program that

identiﬁes all the ancestors of a

person by a given surname and

writes their surnames to a new ar-

ray in chronological order

Two-

Dimensi-

onal Array

Processing

Replace all negative elements of

the 2D array with zeros

A square table is speciﬁed,

each element of which deter-

mines the distance between

cities. Assume that there are

no errors in the table. Find

pairs of cities with the mini-

mal distance between them.

A rectangular table is given: the

number 1 indicates land, and the

number 0 indicates water. Deter-

mine the number of islands. As-

sume that from one cell you can

go to another “by land” if they are

located next to each other verti-

cally or horizontally.

tempts, but only the results of the ﬁrst attempt were

used in the present study.

The second stage of our empirical work was re-

alised in the course “Algorithms and data structures”

for future bachelors in Computer science (Software

and applications development and analysis). We used

Introspection as a Condition of Students’ Self-management in Programming Training

147

the same series of tasks that was suggested to students

by Workshop elements in Moodle personal learning

environment. The kind of grading was the same as

one on the ﬁrst stage: +1 point, if the program is sub-

mitted and perform the required results; +1 point, if

the program correctly work with the author’s tests,

+1 point, if the reviewer cannot suggest any tests to

indicate the bugs. Students took part in the grading

together with a teacher, it was anonymous peer re-

view process. This work supported developing stu-

dents’ skills in introspection and promoted them to

self-management of their own independent work. The

analysis of students’ review used in this paper to de-

scribe binds between quality of such grading, qual-

ity of submissions and student’s introspection compe-

tence.

The pedagogical environment was essentially dif-

fer from the one at the ﬁrst stage because of different

educational programs and inﬂuence of the COVID-

2019 pandemic. Microsoft Visual Studio (C++) was

used as the software-instrumental resources. All stu-

dents solved these problems out off classroom. There

were only review lectures and one practical work in

class rooms, because COVID-2019 pandemic have

started. So the students have not been equipped with

examples of solving similar problems, but they had

some experience in programming as a result of pass-

ing previous courses according the curricular. We

can believe that management of students’ indepen-

dent work in problem solving was subsidiary or self-

management. Personal learning environment in Moo-

dle was the key component of the courseware. The

leading information channel was the interactive lec-

tures realised in Lesson element of Moodle (direct

management with answering short questions after

each portion of information) as well as the teacher

consultations in built-in messenger (co-management).

The system of pedagogical diagnostics was based

on analysing workshop submissions and assessments,

built-in lecture testing, results of ﬁnal tournaments

in programming. The material on base algorithms

for linear data structure processing (linear algorithms,

branching, cycles, one-dimensional arrays process-

ing, two-dimensional arrays processing) covers only

ﬁrst module of the course in contract with the curric-

ular of future teachers of informatics.

There were not the ﬁnal test for future computer

science bachelors because of COVID-2019 pandemic.

So we needed another values for comparison the stu-

dents’ educational achievements with characteristics

being investigated. We used the results of automated

testing during the students’ work with Lesson element

in Moodle. There were 6 of such interactive lectures

in the course (not only for the investigated topics).

The questions were both theoretical and practical. A

student could try to pass the lecture so many times as

he/she wanted. We used the highest test results for

each lecture as the test value. The average of these

test values across the course were calculated to obtain

appropriate characteristic for each student. Also the

average time that students used for lecture studying

and testing was analysed as an additional characteris-

tic of student’s style of learning.

Students had possibility to pass the course with-

out taking part in suggested workshops by indepen-

dent studying correspondent material using the Inter-

net and taking part in tournaments to show their com-

petences. 11 students – future bachelors of computer

science have taken part in the workshops.

4 RESULTS AND DISCUSSION

4.1 Future Informatics Teachers

Introspection

Correlation between students’ ﬁnal test results and

students’ average grades for submitted works has

been evaluated to estimate the validity of our assess-

ment tools on the sample of future teachers of infor-

matics (ﬁgure 1). Coefﬁcient of Pearson’s correlation

is 0.70 that is statistical signiﬁcant at the 5% signiﬁ-

cance level.

Figure 1: Correlation between students’ ﬁnal test results

and students’ average grades for submitted works (future

informatics teachers).

Correlation between the quality of tasks execution

by students and their skills in assessment seems to be

very good for 7 students (ﬁgure 2), but 3 students with

highest results of tasks execution did not take part in

assessment, so we cannot prove this correlation statis-

tically, the size of our sample is not enough. Accord-

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148

ing to our pedagogical observation, some students did

not take part in the assessment because of their mis-

takes in time planning.

Figure 2: Correlation between students’ average grades for

assessment and average grades for submitted works (future

informatics teachers).

Not all students were able to maintain the proper

pace of educational activity progressing from the ﬁrst

topic to the last (ﬁgure 3). Some of them worked

effective only in the begin, when direct instructions

were full enough to execute some tasks. Because of

low motivation and lack of elementary skills in self-

management, they did not switch to co-management

by their own initiative. These students did not sub-

mit some works in time and then passed the tasks at

classes with personal participation of the teacher in

the process of programming and time planning. So we

should develop a mechanism for preventive diagnos-

tic of students’ skills in self-management and timely

turn them to direct management of educational activ-

ity. Also, we see that direct management is an easier

way of educational activity for some students. This

way seems more comfortable for them. So, we should

develop special methods to motivate this category of

students for their progressing to self-management of

the own educational activity. But other students ac-

tively used communication and additional sources to

solve problems and did not decrease the level of sub-

missions, when progressing to next, more difﬁcult

topic.

As expected, the most difﬁcult for the students

was the third task in each Workshop, the least difﬁcult

– the ﬁrst task (ﬁgure 4). Analysing the structure of

student works according to given criteria (ﬁgure 4),

we can conclude that the most problem for students

was not the development of the program but provident

that it works correctly. The author’s tests often were

absent or incorrect. The program, if present, often

was correct, but sometimes the reviewer’s tests could

ﬁnd some bugs.

Figure 3: Students’ progressing from the ﬁrst topic task

(Linear algorithms) to the last (2D-arrays). Students’ names

are shown as S1-S10. Vertical axis shows students’ grades

for submission. The maximum possible grade was 50 (fu-

ture informatics teachers).

Figure 4: Part of submissions that satisfy to the criterion

(program code, author’s test, reviewer’s test) on each task

(ﬁrst, second, third). This part was calculated as average

for all 5 Workshops (future informatics teachers).

The analysis of the structure of students’ works

showed that the students’ competency in introspection

was not enough. In our opinion, the introspection is

one of the leading elements of self-management com-

petency. So the educational tasks should always con-

tent some sub-tasks on introspection.

Summarizing the result of our experience in com-

bining of different types of management of students’

educational activity, we can conclude that providing

the above pedagogical conditions gave us possibility

to improve the educational process in “Practicum of

problem solving in informatics”. Flexible manage-

ment of students’ educational activity with timely turn

from the direct management to co-management and

subsidiary management with return, when needed,

supported the efﬁciency learning. In despite students’

involving in practical labour out of the educational

process, the goals of “Practicum of problem solving

Introspection as a Condition of Students’ Self-management in Programming Training

149

in informatics” were achieved.

4.2 Future Computer Science Bachelors

Introspection

According to curricular future computer science

bachelors had additional training in programming and

their results were higher (see ﬁgure 5). Their compe-

tence in introspection was enough to produce testing

of own programs in comparison with future informat-

ics teachers. But sometimes students did not see the

error in these tests. So the grades for auto testing were

lower than one for submissions: the program works

and processes some data with errors, this errors are

shown by author’s test, but the author submits this test

and does not see the errors. To ﬁnd errors that were

not shown by author’s test was more difﬁcult. But

reviewers found these errors, so grades for review’s

tests were less. This situation is well known in prac-

tice of software developing. Therefore, introspection

is one of the necessary soft competencies in this ﬁeld

of business.

Figure 5: Part of submissions that satisfy to the criterion

(program code, author’s test, reviewer’s test) on each task

(ﬁrst, second, third). This part was calculated as average

for all 5 Workshops (future computer science bachelors).

We did not observe a tendency to decreasing stu-

dents activity and quality of submissions with increas-

ing the difﬁculty of tasks (see ﬁgure 6).

In our opinion, this fact characterises that students

of this sample do not need in direct management of

their independent work and tried to solve complicated

problems. On other hand they, may be, were not so

careful with “simple” problems.

Figure 7 shows correlation between students’

grades for assessment and submissions. This grades

was calculated as average of corresponded grades for

all 5 workshops. All grades are shown in relative val-

ues, so diapason of values is from 0 to 1.

The above analysis shows that introspection is one

Figure 6: Students’ progressing from the ﬁrst topic task

(Linear algorithms) to the last (2D-arrays). Students’ names

are shown as S1-S11. Vertical axis shows students’ grades

for submissions. The maximum possible grade was 1.0 (fu-

ture computer science bachelors).

Figure 7: Correlation between students’ average grades for

assessment and average grades for submitted works (future

computer science bachelors).

of the key integral characteristic of the student’s learn-

ing style. It is important element of pedagogical con-

ditions for high levels of student’s independent work

management up to self-management. More over, the

introspection is a part of professional competences of

software engineers. We can see positive correlation

between the introspection signs and the signs of prob-

lem solving in software developing. Despite satis-

factory level of introspection that was observe at our

study we should stress that any courseware needs in

special tasks for developing and monitoring students’

introspection.

We can conclude that the level of students’ in-

dependent work management was enough high as a

result of providing the theoretically grounded peda-

gogical conditions in in the teaching the course “Al-

gorithms and data structures”. Realisation of distant

learning components in our courseware gave us pos-

sibility for monitoring and timely change the levels

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150

of learning activity management for each student and

supported students’ self-management when COVID-

19 pandemic has inﬂuenced on the educational pro-

cess.

4.3 Correlation Between Introspection

and Success in Directly Managed

Learning

Direct management of students’ educational activity

(independent work) was organised at studying new

material with Lesson elements of Moodle learning

management system. There were suggested 6 such

lectures: “Graph processing algorithms (data repre-

sentation)”; “Graph processing algorithms (data anal-

ysis)”;“Optimization problems on graphs”; “Basics of

tree data structure”; “Application of tree data struc-

ture”; “Fundamental algorithms and their construc-

tion”. This lectures assumed a student to read edu-

cational material by short portions and answer cor-

responding questions online. The lecture work was

graded on the base of student’s answer correctness.

Students attempts to listen the lecture material and

answer the question were not limited. The highest

grade for answering was used in the course grading

system. The time of each attempt was stored. So

we have possibility to check was there some corre-

lation between students’ results in creative work with

their programs developing or testing (high levels of

students’ independent work management) and results

in lecture studying that was managed directly.

Figure 8 shows that correlation between students

submissions and their lecture testing result are absent.

Direct management provided high level of students’

mastering in educational material despite of their re-

sults in program developing. Moreover, some stu-

dents with high mastering in programming did not

paid attention enough to obtain the maximum grade

for this kind of educational work. We can see similar

picture when analysing the correlation between stu-

dents’ grades for assessment and their lecture testing

result (ﬁgure 9). There are not correlation between

students’ grades for assessment and the average time

that students used to complete lecture with built-in

tests also (ﬁgure 10). So we can conclude that intro-

spection did not inﬂuence at the efﬁciency of direct

managed educational activity.

5 CONCLUSIONS

Our pedagogical observations during the presented

empirical work showed that providing the theoretical

Figure 8: Correlation between students’ average grades for

submissions and average of the highest grades for lecture

testing (future computer science bachelors).

Figure 9: Correlation between students’ average grades for

assessment and average of the highest grades for lecture

testing (future computer science bachelors).

Figure 10: Correlation between students’ average grades for

assessment and the average time that they used for lecture

studying and testing (future computer science bachelors).

grounded pedagogical conditions of management of

Introspection as a Condition of Students’ Self-management in Programming Training

151

student’s educational activity led to improving the ed-

ucational process in the ﬁeld of programming. We

implemented ﬂexible management of student’s edu-

cational activity with timely turn from the direct man-

agement to co-management and subsidiary manage-

ment. We observed that such methods supported the

efﬁciency of learning.

Analysis of obtained experimental data in context

of our theoretical framework has given the base for

such conclusions:

• signs for student’s introspection as a characteris-

tic of his/her learning activity was suggested: 1)

student’s success in testing there own programs;

2) student’s success in testing and evaluation of

the program code of other participants of the ed-

ucational process – our pedagogical observations

showed that introspection measured by this way

positively inﬂuenced to students self-management

efﬁciency;

• students’ competency in introspection is impor-

tant as for self-management of their independent

work as for solving practical tasks in the ﬁeld of

programming, so it should be improved, and ed-

ucational tasks should always content some sub-

tasks on introspection;

• some students are not ready to manage their own

learning activity, sometimes the type of manage-

ment of student’s educational activity should be

timely turned back to direct management – us-

ing direct management of learning activity for stu-

dents with low competence in introspection gave

them possibility to master the educational mate-

rial;

• students’ introspection did not inﬂuence on efﬁ-

ciency of their learning activity under direct man-

agement; more over, some students with high

level of introspection did not carry out the tasks

under direct management enough carefully; so

the improving management of students’ indepen-

dent work from direct management through co-

management and subsidiary management to self-

management is the important task of educational

process.

Further work in the ﬁeld of computer-oriented

management of students’ independent educational ac-

tivity we see in developing new methods of stu-

dents’ progress from direct management through co-

management and subsidiary management to self-

management in information and communication edu-

cational environments, in introduction of these meth-

ods into various educational disciplines as well as

studying pedagogical and psychological conditions to

increase students’ motivation for self-management of

own educational activity.

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