Abstract:

In recent years, non-CS students are increasingly demanding computing courses, and they recognize the importance and relevance of computing in their field. However, experience has shown that many non-CS students get frustrated with learning programming. Therefore, this study designs an innovative teaching method to improve the learning experiences of non-CS students in an introductory programming course. Since the limitation of traditional classroom space that it is not conducive to student interaction, cooperation, and sharing, this study proposes an innovative teaching space called “arena classroom”. This design allows a teacher located in the middle of the classroom to move more flexibly and quickly reaching every student and assisting them. The arena classroom also redesigns the information presentation method, a 360-degree ring-shaped screen with reference to the NBA court was built above the center of the arena classroom. It provides students with the ability to view screen information from any angle without covered by anything. With the help of ICT technology, students can instantly see the problem-solving process of other students and share ideas on the screen, making students in the arena classroom feel like in a sense of presence on the field. Furthermore, this study develops a teaching tool called CT2Code to decrease the difficulty in learning programming for non-CS majors. Students can describe visually their problem-solving process on flowchart editor embedded CT2Code to allow non-CS majors avoiding direct contact with difficult programming syntax when starting to learn to program. Subsequently, the flowchart can be fully converted into codes or transformed to the fill-in-the-blank format which allows students to write codes incrementally. Finally, to understand the acceptance of a proposed innovative teaching method for the non-CS students, we distributed questionnaires to the students, conducted inductive analysis and obtained satisfactory results.

Keywords:

Learning experiences, teaching method, teaching tool, non-CS majors, programming.