An intervention strategy for mitigating the prevalence of syntax errors during task exercise engagements

Abstract

The success of a pedagogical intervention is determined by the level of knowledge and corresponding success achieved by recipients of the intervention. While knowledge is visibly measurable in sport-related activities and in most stem courses by an individual’s ability to critically evaluate a problem, execute well-defined procedures and come up with an answer or range of possible propositions, evaluating knowledge acquisition in a programming task is a much complex task. Complex in the sense that a learner must master the syntactic, semantic, and logical details of a given language before being asserted as to have mastered the language. Ergo, it becomes evident, the difficulty of structuring a learner’s engagement process. Owing that the pattern of engagement is a determinant for the degree of knowledge acquired by a learner in programming courses. We adopted a tutorial walk-through strategy, which enables us to guide students in adopting a structured method of learning engagement. To appraise the effectiveness of our strategy, we evaluate our learner’s engagement activities using the count of errors they generate in the course of their learning activities. Engagement comparison across 3 semesters shows a sharp reduction in the count of syntax errors, which is indicative of an increase in the degree of knowledge acquisition, retention, and increased adoption of a structured pattern of learning engagement.