A MATHEMATICAL DEFINITION OF A CODING PROCESS TO CAUSALLY ASSESS CODING COMPETENCE

Abstract

The search for causal relations from observational or experimental data is an open and pervasive problem that spans many fields of research. In the area of learning, this is especially important. The ability to determine the effect of a new teaching strategy or the cause of an upswing in student performance is persistently desirable. In computer science courses, integrated development environments (IDE) offer students a plethora of features promising to accelerate the coding process and instill the necessary competency skills for seamless migration to industry. In this work, we introduce a mathematical definition of a coding process and apply causal discovery methods to data collected from an IDE. We approached the problem statically and dynamically and found strong evidence of a causal effect of consultations on coding competency. We set forth the groundwork for future analyses of these processes and exhibit the extendibility of this work to other disciplines.