An empirical study on program comprehension task classification of novices

Program comprehension is difficult to novices. Tasks have substantial effect on program comprehension. This work is part of larger study aims at identifying tasks that can improve novices´ program comprehension. In one of our previous studies, fourteen tasks were identified to be feasibly effective in improving novices´ program comprehension. These tasks were also classified into cognitive categories using revised Bloom taxonomy. This particular study is to validate the classification of these tasks. An online survey was conducted to a number of programming instructors as well as developers. The respondents were asked to place each of the fourteen identified tasks into one of the six cognitive categories of revised Bloom taxonomy. The findings showed that most of the respondents agreed with our classification. In future, we plan to replicate this study with more respondents and also to conduct controlled experiments to investigate the effect of the classified tasks on novices.