Exercise sequence adaptation in programming education

Abstract

There exist many kinds of exercise sequences to teach the fundamental contents of C programming, and each student's understanding can be affected by the sequence choice. However, in programming education today, teachers usually give same exercise problems to all students, yet often in the same order. Therefore, many students on a programming course suffer from the difference between their own levels of acquiring programming skills and the progress of the course. Some of them feel it difficult to catch up with the progress. On the other hand, students with a high aspiration toward learning are not always satisfied with the slowness of the progress. To solve this problem, the paper proposes a procedure to produce an appropriate exercise sequence, depending on the degree of understanding by the student. The exercise sequence would suit each student because its selection is based on information not only about a single student, but also about students learning in the same environment. We have developed a questionnaire for students of a C programming course. From the questionnaire results, it has been found that a student's attitude to learning is important information, as well as the degree of understanding, for selecting an appropriate exercise sequence.