A systematic review of approaches for teaching introductory programming and their influence on success

Abstract

Decades of effort has been put into decreasing the high failure rates of introductory programming courses. Whilst numerous studies suggest approaches that provide effective means of teaching programming, to date, no study has attempted to quantitatively compare the impact that different approaches have had on the pass rates of programming courses. In this article, we report the results of a systematic review on articles describing introductory programming teaching approaches, and provide an analysis of the effect that various interventions can have on the pass rates of introductory programming courses. A total of 60 pre-intervention and post-intervention pass rates, describing thirteen different teaching approaches were extracted from relevant articles and analyzed. The results showed that on average, teaching interventions can improve programming pass rates by nearly one third when compared to a traditional lecture and lab based approach.

Learning Programming through Games and Contests: Overview, Characterisation and Discussion

“…The participation is an important part in each computer science study due to motivation and lower dropout rates. Vihavainen et al (2014) present another approach in a literature overview. Their paper reports about 60 pre-interventions and post-interventions and analyses their influence on students' pass rates in programming courses.…”

“…Prog&Play may help even to recruit students in computer science (Muratet et al, 2010). Intervention of educational games in programming courses raises pass rates by 10.8% on average (Vihavainen et al, 2014).…”

Problemas e Dificuldades no Ensino de Programação: Um Mapeamento Sistemático

“…Destacase também a revisão sistemática de Vihavainen et al [75], que identifica intervenções no ensino de programação descritas na literatura e verificam se elas melhoram as taxas de aprovação em disciplinas de programação.…”

Initiatives to Increase Engagement in First-Year ICT

“…The learning of introductory programming has been acknowledged as especially difficult [1]. While a great deal of research has been undertaken to improve learning outcomes in this area, failure rates are still acknowledged as high [17,20]. A related concern is the issue of high attrition rates among ICT students [21], particularly female students [14].…”