Record Detail

Computer programming is a subject that requires problem-solving strategies and
involves a great number of programming logic activities which pose challenges for
learners. Therefore, providing learning support and guidance is important. Collaborative
learning is widely believed to be an effective teaching approach; it can enhance learners’
social interaction and offer a learning environment which provides rich learning experiences.
However, the social interaction in collaborative learning does not occur automatically.
Without proper guidance strategies or supporting tools for collaborative learning, the
learning effects can be disappointing. To solve such a problem, a problem posing-based
practicing strategy was proposed to support the development of a collaborative learning
activity in a computer programming practice course. The students were guided to raise
computer programming problems to boost the discussion among team members. The
problems raised in each team were then exchanged and solved by another team to examine
the coding and to provide feedback. To investigate the effectiveness of the proposed
approach, an experiment was conducted in a C# programming course. Two classes of
students from a university participated in the experiment. One class with 25 students was
randomly assigned as the experimental group, and learned with a collaborative learning
activity using the problem posing-based practicing strategy; the other class with 28 students
was the control group, which learned with a conventional collaborative learning
activity. The results show that the proposed strategy benefited the students in terms of
improving their learning achievement, in particular, their programming skills. Moreover, it
was found that the students who learned with the proposed approach had higher self-efficacy and lower cognitive load than those who learned with the conventional collaborative
learning approach.