Progression of student reasoning about concurrency: Extended abstract

Abstract

In computing, concurrency refers to the notion that different parts or units of a program or algorithm may be executed out-of-order or in partial order, without affecting the final outcome. I seek to study how students conceptualize concurrency concepts and how these conceptualizations mature over the course of their undergraduate education. Thus far, I have designed an assessment that comprises two natural language problems and administered it to 110 undergraduate students at all four levels of the undergraduate program. I employed a grounded theory analysis to identify the emerging strategies and conceptions, performed open coding of student responses and abstracted emergent categories about student conceptions and problem-solving strategies. I compared these strategies and conceptions across grade levels to explore how student thinking around concurrency changes over the course of a CS education. This analysis will guide the design of a protocol for task-based interviews to further explore student reasoning. Longer term, the goal of my work is to inform the development of educational tools and strategies intended to promote the growth of student conceptions about concurrency.