Teaching Introductory Programming to IS Students: The Impact of Teaching Approaches on Learning Performance

Introductory programming courses are typically required for undergraduate students majoring in Information Systems. Instructors use different approaches to teaching this course: some lecturing and assigning programming exercises, others only assigning programming exercises without lectures. This research compares the effects of these two teaching approaches on learning performance by collecting data from two sections of an introductory programming course in an urban public university. One section used lectures and assignments while the other used assignments only. Data analysis included tests within each dataset, tests across the two datasets, and tests of a simple model over the combined dataset. Results indicated that both approaches are effective, but the exercises-only approach is more effective than lectures combined with exercises. Further analysis indicated that students’ current programming skills, prior programming experience, and grade expectations are significant antecedents of learning performance in the course. Results support the conclusion suggesting that when teaching introductory programming courses, instructors may want to consider choosing the student-centered active learning over the traditional lecture format in order to improve students’ learning performance. This study contributes to the improvement of teaching and learning effectiveness as well as efficiency of introductory programming classes to the benefit of instructors and students, alike

The More You Teach, the Less They Learn: Effects of Teaching Approaches on Learning Performance

Typically, an introductory programming course is a required course for business college undergraduate students majoring ininformation systems. Different instructors may have different approaches to teaching this course: Some give lectures andassign programming exercises, while others only assign programming exercises without giving lectures. This researchdeliberately compared the effects of the two teaching approaches on learning performance. Results indicated that: (1) bothapproaches are effective, and (2) the programming-exercises-only approach is more effective than the other approach. Furtheranalysis indicated that students’ current programming skills, prior programming experience, and grade expectation, aresignificant antecedents of students’ performance in terms of their final grades for the course. These results suggested thatwhen teaching introductory programming courses, instructors may consider choosing the student-centered active learningover the traditional lecture format in order to improve students’ learning performance

Turning engineers into reflective university teachers

Increasing attention to quality and innovation in Higher Education (HE) is enhancing the pedagogic knowledge of faculty members and thereby encouraging the academic success of their students. This aim requires, from the institution and teachers, a greater degree of involvement than was previously the case. This is certainly borne out by experience in Portuguese universities. The growing concern of engineers with issues of pedagogy and academic success marks a sea change in the traditional conceptions of teaching and learning in Higher Education. There are, of course, indications that many academics are resistant to change. Our research indicates a tradition among Portuguese and Scottish academics to incline their effort toward research with a resultant decline in interest and effort on teaching. The present paper presents a meta-analysis of research conducted at the University of Aveiro (Portugal) and the University of Strathclyde (United Kingdom) between 2000 and 2004 involving academics who taught first-year introductory Programming courses. The purpose of our study was to promote reflection and research on teaching based issues as a strategy toward improved student learning. The findings of the study raised a number of salient issues for discussion and consideration. In this paper, we present some of these issues, aiming to explore the impact that the findings may have on teachers' attitudes towards teaching and students' learning in introductory programming courses

Teaching Subroutines: As Early as Possible

Students on introductory courses in programming languages often experience difficulty understanding the basic principles of procedural programming. In this paper we discuss the importance of early understanding of the subroutine mechanism. Two approaches for self-training – static and dynamic - are presented and compared. The static approach is appropriate for written text in paper textbook. The dynamic approach is suitable for interactive training using a computer. An interactive module was developed for teaching subroutines

Teaching Introductory Programming Online: Lessons Learned

Programming is considered a fundamental skill for Information Systems students. Yet, it is generally regarded as hard for students to learn and challenging for instructors to teach. Fully online programming courses can make it even more challenging than the face-to-face version. In this paper, we share our experience of taking a multi-faceted approach in teaching an introductory programming course online. We discuss pedagogical considerations in our approach that incorporates best practices with experimentation to be suitable for our student body while achieving desired learning outcomes

Teaching Security in Introductory C-Programming Courses

[ES] The challenges in the age of digitalization demand that universities qualify their computer science and engineering graduates well with respect to IT Security (information technology security). In engineering education such lectures are often offered as an elective subject, only. We propose to teach security aspects with respect to robustness and correctness already in the introductory programming course and therefore to cover at least parts of the overall field of IT Security as a compulsory subject for all students. The paper describes the integration of some rules and recommendations from the SEI Cert C Coding Standard into our introductory C programming course and discusses our experience with the course over the last two years with respect to its contents, realization, evaluation and examination.Pawelczak, D. (2020). Teaching Security in Introductory C-Programming Courses. En 6th International Conference on Higher Education Advances (HEAd'20). Editorial Universitat Politècnica de València. (30-05-2020):595-603. https://doi.org/10.4995/HEAd20.2020.1111459560330-05-202

The Live Programming Lecturing Technique: A Study of the Student Experience in Introductory and Advanced Programming Courses

This paper investigates the topic of teaching programming in higher education. The teaching method often referred to as live programming has become a widely applied lecturing strategy for teaching programming subjects in an interactive fashion. Lectures based on live programming normally involve live demonstrations, explanations and interaction with the students. Although this technique seems to be very popular amongst students and instructors, we hypothesise that it also involves potential challenges. In this paper, we investigate the perceived difficulty and promise of following such an approach from a student perspective. We present results from interviews with 1st and 2nd year IT Bachelor students about their experience with live programming. Our results indicate that students’ engagement and desire to learn through active learning techniques still are very much valid also in introductory and advanced programming courses. Furthermore, we also interpret from our findings a suggested model of a repeated cycle of lecture, demo and exercise as highly beneficial to the student learning process

Scrum-Based Learning Environment: Fostering Self-Regulated Learning

Academics teaching software development courses are experimenting with teaching methods aiming to improve students’ learning experience and learning outcomes. Since Agile software development is gaining popularity in industry due to positive effects on managing projects, academics implement similar Agile approaches in student-centered learning environments. In this paper, we discuss teaching introductory programming based on Scrum. Our learning environment, supported by the Doubtfire learning management system, fosters perceived autonomy and perceived competence by providing tools and opportunities for self-regulated learners to adjust their learning strategies. Evaluation of the learning environment revealed that students want to be in control of their learning

Do Robots Dream of Virtual Sheep: Rediscovering the "Karel the Robot" Paradigm for the "Plug&Play Generation"

We introduce ”C-Sheep”, an educational system designed to teach students the fundamentals of computer programming in a novel and exciting way. Recent studies suggest that computer science education is fast approaching a crisis - application numbers for degree courses in the area of computer programming are down, and potential candidates are put off the subject which they do not fully understand. We address this problem with our system by providing the visually rich virtual environment of ”The Meadow”, where the user writes programs to control the behaviour of a sheep using our ”CSheep” programming language. This combination of the ”Karel the Robot” paradigm with modern 3D computer graphics techniques, more commonly found in computer games, aims to help students to realise that computer programming can be an enjoyable and rewarding experience and intends to help educators with the teaching of computer science fundamentals. Our mini-language-like system for computer science education uses a state of the art rendering engine offering features more commonly found in entertainment systems. The scope of the mini-language is designed to fit in with the curriculum for the first term of an introductory computer program ming course (using the C programming language)