Effects of Infusing Interactive and Collaborative Learning to Teach an Introductory Programming Course

Abstract

This Innovate Practice Full Paper presents positive effects in teaching an introductory programming course in Python by infusing both interactive and collaborative learning. For a dynamic classroom, we used an interactive computer programming environment, Repl.it, as a top-level shell and created several in-class exercises, assignments, small lab-based projects. In addition, we used an eBook, which offers an animation and software visualization tool where students can step through code line-by-line and a program editing and execution area where students can execute examples, change them, and execute the updated code. We also introduced collaborative learning at the beginning of this introductory programming course in the form of doing team projects submitted at the end of the semester. The students were instructed to commit code to GitHub which ensures that their work will not be lost as well as, provide them basic task management tools to collaborate. The proposed pedagogical approaches were applied in the Fall'2017 semester to teach an introductory CS course in Python. The traditional course instruction that has historically been used in the department are used as the control group. For evaluation and result analysis, thirteen sections of COSC 111 were included in this study over three semesters: Fall 2014, Fall 2016 and Fall 2017. The initial evaluation of summative assessment and analysis of the survey results enable us to conclude that the proposed instructional approach increased student motivation and engagement, facilitated learning, and contributed to the progress of students in this course as well as reduced the failure rates.