Enhance Students’ Motivation to Learn Programming Through Projects

Abstract

This article presents the results of a pedagogical experiment when teaching microcontroller programming. The pedagogical experiment was conducted at the Faculty of Information Technology of the L.N. Gumilyov Eurasian National University in the form of project-based seminars on the Arduino platform (2017-2020). The experiment was attended by 88 first-year IT students. Our goal in this study is to verify the proposed hypothesis on the use of the project-based learning method in teaching microcontroller programming. In the process of conducting a pedagogical experiment, we divided our students into 2 groups: control and experimental. The training of both groups was carried out according to one curriculum, but using different methods. In the control group, traditional teaching methods and learning tools were used, and in the experimental group, we used the technology of project-based learning. As assessment criteria, we took the test tasks “pre-test” and “post-test” that we developed, and conducted a survey for the control and experimental groups. We used statistical methods to confirm or refute the proposed hypothesis of our research, that is, at the end of the pedagogical experiment to get an informed decision about the difference and coincidence of the obtained data.

A Study of First-Year Students’ Attitudes toward Programming in the Innovation in Educational Technology Course

“…However, low-performing students in this study had a positive attitude toward collaboration. erefore, getting students to write code together in pairs or small groups can enhance students' programming performance and confidence [52][53][54]. Pair programming produces more rapid and effective solutions than solo programming [75].…”

“…In addition to motivating the students, instructors should provide novices with fundamental skills and simple problem solving before starting the course so that novices have the background needed to understand basic programming. Previous studies have suggested various teaching methods: live coding, gamification, team based-learning, interactive computer tutors, mentor support, peer instruction, and pair programming [47][48][49][50][51][52][53][54]. However, some of these teaching methods do not always succeed.…”

“…In addition, students with high programming skills will help a partner who has lower programming skills to complete their task [67]. Getting students to write code together in pairs or small groups can also enhance students' programming performance and confidence [52][53][54]. Students with greater collaboration attitudes tend to make more effort and more efficiently solve problems when working collaboratively with others [61].…”

Development of Professional Skills of Teachers Through an Instrumental and Methodological Platform: Key Aspects.

“…5. Communication skills: the ability to communicate and collaborate effectively in virtual environments (Nurbekova et al, 2020).…”