Abstract:

The author taught an introduction to computers course which includes programming in Fall 2022 semester. Most of the twenty students enrolled were Freshmen and only about half of them were computer science majors. The programming experience of students ranges from none to some while some students were not expecting to learn programming at all. It was challenging because of the students’ diversified background on programming experience.
Considering many students did not have any programming experience at all, the author decided to adopt the pedagogy of experiential learning so the students can learn effectively from hands-on programming labs. The programming language adopted was Python because it is a typeless language which is more friendly to students without any programming experience.
Once started, all students quickly learned how to write and execute a simple working program after the author helped them to correct all mistakes in their programs at the scene through the hands-on labs. After overcoming the beginning barrier of writing a working program, students were ready and comfortable to learn the fundamental concepts of programming. The author then carefully picks some typical examples about key concepts of programming and common mistakes made by inexperienced programmer and delivered to students. With the introduction of these practical tips, students could avoid mistakes and frustration and became much more confident in writing programs. Some students even said “Programming is easy!” after this stage. The author’s approach proved to be a success after the semester ended.
This paper describes the details of the author’s strategy and approach of experiential learning toward teaching computer programming languages.

Keywords:

Programming language, experiential learning.