O-group is a discussion group meeting every 2-3 weeks on Friday afternoon, 14.00 to discuss on topics related with learning programming. The goal of the group is to deepen the understanding of its members on how students learn programming, and how their learning can be supported and assessed better. We hope to find research problems and experimental settings to evaluate the solutions. Thus, plans for improving courses, research ideas and preliminary results are discussed in the group.Some active titles or ideas within the group are:
- Understanding student's mental models of programming concepts
- Text graphs as a means of representing students' knowledge on programming.
- Analysis of student interaction in small groups
In fall 2003 the group started reading and discussing the book: F. Detienne, Software Design - Cognitive Aspects. Practitioner series, Springer, 2002.
Current members of the group are Päivi Kinnunen, Lauri Malmi, Esko Nuutila, Kerttu Pollari-Malmi, Otto Seppälä, Juha Sorva, Petri Tenhunen, Seppo Törmä,