Manuscript received June 8, 2022; revised September 20, 2022; accepted October 17, 2022.
Abstract—This work registers the initial results of a teaching
strategy implemented with students entering the Algorithms
discipline with a higher degree in Computing. This discipline
offered to first-year students records cases of dropout and
evasion. Thus, it is necessary to implement teaching strategies to
provide engagement, interest, and motivation with the subjects
worked on. The main objective is apply an active methodology
problem-based learning in programming teaching. In this work
participated 177 students in the years 2019-2 (47),
2020-1/2020-2 (83), and 2021-2 (47), enrolled in the first period
of the course. The methodology adopted for the development of
this study consisted of: use of questionnaires to measure prior
knowledge about computing concepts; group discussion of the
answers recorded in the questionnaire; development of an APP
for smartphone; use of the PBL (Problem-based learning)
methodology as a learning strategy. It is an activity related to
the active teaching and learning methodology of problem-based
learning that is being developed on the first day of class in
groups of up to five students. The strategy consisted of two
actions: 1) answering a questionnaire associating everyday
computing elements; and 2) even though the programming
concepts were not presented, the groups were challenged to
develop a smartphone application. Each group received a
questionnaire containing 19 questions divided into four blocks.
What can be seen from the completion of this work was the
enthusiasm, motivation, and engagement of the students, who,
even though they were newcomers, organized themselves into
groups and researched the necessary strategies to complete the
challenge. When measuring the knowledge obtained through
the application of a questionnaire relating to the content (with
the participation of 62% of students), it was found that 81% of
the participants obtained the necessary grade for approval of
that content. Following the strategy of an active methodology of
learning and teaching that favors the protagonism and
autonomy of the student, we concluded that strategy was
benefic for to the students, and the teacher acted as a guide in
the teaching process, directing what should be researched to
find the solution and serving as a tutor in the resolution of the
problem presented. Preliminarily, part of this study was
presented at the 2nd International Computer Programming
Education Conference.
Index Terms—Teaching programming, active methodologies, learning innovation, problem-based learning
João Paulo Aires and Simone Bello Kaminski Aires are with the Federal
University Technology of Parana (UTFPR), Ponta Grossa-PR, Brazil.
Maria João Varanda Pereira and Luís Manuel Alves are with the Research
Centre in Digitalization and Intelligent Robotics (CeDRI), Instituto
Politécnico de Bragança, Campus de Santa Apolónia, Portugal.
*Correspondence: mjoao@ipb.pt (M.J.V.P.)
Cite: João Paulo Aires, Simone Bello Kaminski Aires, Maria João Varanda Pereira*, and Luis Manuel Alves, "Using the Methodology Problem-Based Learning to Teaching Programming to Freshman Students," International Journal of Information and Education Technology vol. 13, no. 3, pp. 448-455, 2023.
Copyright © 2023 by the authors. This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited (CC BY 4.0).