INVESTIGATING THE IMPACT OF ONLINE DISCUSSION FORUMS ON ENHANCING USERS’ COMPUTER PROGRAMMING SKILLS

Over the last decade, Web 2.0 technologies have allowed internet users to be both consumers and producers of digital content. The new digital platforms are now used in different domains and for a variety of purposes. However, one of the major fields that these online applications seem to have impacted is education. Web 2.0 technologies are of different categories and types. Yet, one of the most popular platforms that are used for educational purposes are discussion forums. The latter enable students and users in general to interact, collaborate and exchange knowledge in various subjects. Our objective in this paper is, therefore, to investigate the potential role that these social online communities play in enhancing the users’ computer programming skills. For this purpose, a study was conducted to analyze the impact that Stack Overflow, a popular online question and answer forum, has on improving the programmers’ learning skills. Results of the study revealed that this web-based community was found to be a valuable resource that helps programmers to learn, share their knowledge and solve coding problems.