Evaluating Active Learning Approaches for Teaching Intermediate Programming at an Early Undergraduate Level

Volume 10, Issue 1 (January 2019), pp. 61–66

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@article{jocse-10-1-10,
  author={Dhruva K. Chakravorty and Marinus "Maikel" Pennings and Honggao Liu and Zengyu "Sheldon" Wei and Dylan M. Rodriguez and Levi T. Jordan and Donald "Rick" McMullen and Noushin Ghaffari and Shaina D. Le and Derek Rodriquez and Crystal Buchanan and Nathan Gober},
  title={Evaluating Active Learning Approaches for Teaching Intermediate Programming at an Early Undergraduate Level},
  journal={The Journal of Computational Science Education},
  year=2019,
  month=jan,
  volume=10,
  issue=1,
  pages={61--66},
  doi={https://doi.org/10.22369/issn.2153-4136/10/1/10}
}

There is a growing need to provide intermediate programming classes to STEM students early in their undergraduate careers. These efforts face significant challenges due to the varied computing skill-sets of learners, requirements of degree programs, and the absence of a common programming standard. Instructional scaffolding and active learning methods that use Python offer avenues to support students with varied learning needs. Here, we report on quantitative and qualitative outcomes from three distinct models of programming education that (i) connect coding to hands- on "maker" activities; (ii) incremental learning of computational thinking elements through guided exercises that use Jupyter Notebooks; and (iii) problem-based learning with step-wise code fragments leading to algorithmic implementation. Performance in class activities, capstone projects, in-person interviews, and participant surveys informed us about the effectiveness of these approaches on student learning. We find that students with previous coding experience were able to rely on broader skills and grasp concepts faster than students who recently attended an introductory programming session. We find that, while makerspace activities were engaging and explained basic programming concepts, they lost their appeal in complex programming scenarios. Students grasped coding concepts fastest using the Jupyter notebooks, while the problem-based learning approach was best at having students understand the core problem and create inventive means to address them.