Abstract:

Interactive learning has been proven to be more effective. It helps students stay engaged and interested. Coding is a necessary skill that all students need regardless of their field. It helps them visualize the problem and hence understand it more deeply in some cases. In other cases, it is the only way to solve a problem. Undergraduate students usually have a programming language compulsory course in their first year. They are taught a certain programming language from a computer science point of view. They rarely use practical applications in their code and they finish the course wondering about the actual use of such a programming language.

In this paper, we suggest to teach students some elementary coding at the beginning of the class. Afterwards, we ask them to solve some physics problems through coding as the class moves along. This will show the practical use of their programming skills early in their academic life. At the same time, it will enhance their learning. This method has been tested in an introductory physics class and the results of its effect on the general understanding of different topics show an improvement. We believe that this could be the future of teaching, not only in physics but also in different fields of science.

Keywords:

Learning technologies, interactive learning, learning through coding.