Abstract:

Challenge-based learning is a pedagogical approach that involves the active participation of the student in a real problem situation. By incorporating this approach in subjects related to computer programming, the motivation of students can be improved and, with it, the development of skills that require time and perseverance for their acquisition and that sometimes become difficult for the students.

The objective of this work is to evaluate how challenges can serve as a support tool to improve learning in programming subjects in engineering studies at the undergraduate level. For this, different tools and online platforms that can support this task, such as HackerRank or other similar, have been analyzed by offering facilities for the management of challenges such as their definition, their self-correction, or the generation of instant feedback on the results obtained by the student. Based on this analysis, 33 challenges of different degrees of difficulty have been proposed for more than 350 second-year students of the Degree in Telecommunications Technologies and Services Engineering of the Universidad Politécnica de Madrid. To evaluate its usefulness, two surveys were developed for students, one oriented at the beginning of the course to evaluate the level of knowledge of the students and another oriented at the end to observe if the proposed challenges have contributed to consolidating the knowledge acquired or if it is necessary to include other challenges that develop particular aspects that demonstrate special difficulty in their learning.

The results suggest that programming challenges can be a great complement to traditional teaching methods, particularly in the acquisition of programming skills in university studies.

Keywords:

Challenge-based learning, coding, programming, interactive learning.