Applying Skinnerian Conditioning for Shaping Skill Performance in Online Tutoring of Programming Languages

摘要

Digital learning aims to build knowledge and shape students' skills in order to enhance the quality of the educational process. Adopting pedagogical theories in educational systems is essential for developing integrated solutions that follow teaching strategies for effective learning and suit to students' needs. To this direction, this paper presents a new approach of applying behaviorist theory in a tutoring system for learning programming languages. Specifically, the presented e-learning system uses Skinner's conditioning as a method of instruction occurring through rewards and punishments for behavior. Through Skinnerian conditioning, students make an association between a particular behavior and a consequence. As a behaviorist theory, great importance is placed on how different patterns of reinforcement have different effects on the speed of learning and extinction. Finally, the first-level evaluation results are encouraging for instructors to use the proposed design in online tutoring.