Using Problem-Based Learning in a CS1 Course-Tales from the Trenches

摘要

Putting learning into the hands of learner, making learners responsible for there own learning, and flipping the classroom are all terms you hear today to describe different approaches to teaching various subject matter to students. The idea that students will embrace the idea of responsibility for their own learning presumes that (a) students are ready to do so and (b) students have a desire to learn. In the Fall of 2014, a unique opportunity presented itself in the form of being able to teach two sections of the first core course, CS1, in the computer science curriculum. This unique opportunity would provide a basis for comparing the two standard teaching methods for teaching programming to novices. The traditional lecture-based approach and problem-based learning (PBL) could be compared. The creation of problems or cases is fundamental to the PBL approach to teaching. Finding cases that can be used or adopted into use is not possible because of the complete lack of exemplars. The purpose of this paper is to describe three of the problems/cases used in the PBL version of the CS1 course and to also make some preliminary observations about using PBL in the classroom.