Abstract
<p>Practice is an important component of computer science education, and online learning platforms increasingly provide students with large collections of programming examples and activities. How do students navigate among available practice opportunities when choosing what to work on next? Using interaction data from 247 students across three undergraduate computer science courses, we investigate the tendency for students to select the next programming activity as presented in the system, conforming to the implied sequence presented by a learning interface, which we call “straight-line behavior.” Students become less likely to follow the displayed sequence as a session progresses, while they are slightly more likely to continue in sequence following programming practice activities than example-based activities. Finally, students with more straight-line behavior also complete larger portions of the available programming curriculum. These findings suggest that both the organization of learning opportunities within educational interfaces and the decisions of how to structure curricula might contribute to their learning experiences. While adherence to displayed learning sequences may be an overlooked dimension of student behavior in computer science learning environments, it may offer opportunities for designing systems to account for differences in how students navigate programming practice.</p>