Relation between struggle and learning personality in programming exercises

Abstract

Personality-related characteristics can have an impact on learning experiences and learning outcomes. Moreover, understanding learning approaches of students can help to make personalized pedagogical decisions. Particularly, this has a potential to improve learning outcomes and mitigate user attrition in digital learning environments (DLEs). We hypothesize that persistent individual characteristics may influence a learners’ tendency to struggle during programming exercises. In a study within a digital learning environment for Python programming (N=55), we evaluated the relation between learners’ self-reported personality characteristics and their tendency to struggle during the exercises. We find that, in our sample, some problem solving approaches and all learning preferences are related to struggle indicators. These results indicate that it may be helpful to include personality-related features, like problem solving strategies, as context information for pedagogical modeling in DLEs.