Providing Online Computer Science Programming Course Experience for Distance Learning Students

Abstract

Distance learning is widely in use in many academic institutions around the world. Accordingly, many papers have been published focusing on problems distance learning students can have when attending online courses. Also, several guidelines have been published on how to organize distance learning courses in general. On the other hand, programming courses are specific, since the expected outcome of almost every programming course differs from simple reproducing of knowledge. In other words, after passing a specific programming course a student should be able to solve specific real world problems from that area. In addition, the rapid evolution of new technologies creates another set of problems for students. The idea of this paper is to derive a guide for organizing programming courses via distance learning. This paper focuses on a specific group of distance learners – the employed ones. In that manner, it points out the idea of encouraging employed distance learning attendees to solve work assignments for their study assignments rather than to create “toy programs”. A guideline how to help distance learners to face new situations that occur due to the development of new technologies is given as well. There is also advice on how to predict the student’s possible errors in code and how to help them avoid these errors in the future. Namely, predicting student’s errors in code and warning them in advance can save them a lot of time, which is precious, especially for employed students.