Work in progress — Issues involved in analyzing student activity in the introductory sequence of computing courses

Instructors of introductory computing courses have an intuitive feel for how students are spending their time learning, but there is little quantitative data in this area. Therefore we are studying student effort in three classes across two institutions to look for trends and possible differences by gender, background, course emphasis (for CS majors or not), institution/environment, etc. Students were asked to log their time in various categories and respond to a survey on their perceptions of the logging process. Several obstacles to an effective study have been identified, including student motivation, accuracy of data, and difficulty capturing data. Experience indicates our study could be improved by motivating students better, using courses stable through the study period, using an effective logging mechanism, and providing consistent oversight of student logging throughout the term. This paper presents initial results and discusses some barriers to accurate data collection and analysis.