The mobile social learning environment for novice programmers

摘要

Researchers in the field of Computer Science education have been tirelessly researching into ways to improve teaching and learning in the Computer Science discipline. While programming is at the heart of Computer Science, its teaching and learning are still a challenge. Learners face many difficulties in learning to program due to a myriad of reasons. It is well known that interactions are important for learning, and lead to improved learning outcomes. Many interventions have been successfully employed, variably focusing on facilitating student-content, student-instructor or student-student interactions. However, most of the interventions that focus on increasing student-to-student interactions require students to be on campus or to attend scheduled classes. Studies have shown, however, that attendance rates to scheduled classes are in decline due to a myriad of reasons, rendering such interventions as mostly unhelpful for students who rarely attend scheduled classes. Nonetheless, advances in mobile technology and social media have transformed the way students engage with others in their daily routines. These technologies are embedded in students’ lives, so they are becoming increasingly mobile, always connected, multitasking-savvy and 24/7-minded. To adapt to such behaviours exhibited by students, several learning platforms have incorporated mobile learning environments to provide access anytime, anywhere through mobile devices. However, not all mobile devices can access these platforms and not all students have mobile devices capable of accessing such platforms. In this thesis we investigate the use of mobile technology and social media as tools to support the learning of programming. We exploit the behavioural characteristics of students in their use of technology and focus on increasing student-to-student interactions through the use of these tools as they facilitate and increase interactions anytime, anywhere. Mobile technology and social media are used as the means to connect students wherever they may be, to form a learning environment in which they may interact, communicate, and create and share content relevant to their learning. Using a popular social networking site, accessible to almost all mobile devices, we create a learning environment for students enrolled in introductory programming courses and invited them to join and use it to engage through interactions among themselves to support their learning. Students from three different universities, enrolled in introductory programming courses and with different modes of course delivery, were involved in this study. Four study-phases were conducted to investigate feasibility of the environment, students’ perceptions, experiences and whether the environment was meaningful for the learning of programming. Data were gathered and analysed using quantitative and qualitative statistical approaches. This study reports the feasibility of the environment, students’ perceptions, experiences and the usefulness of the mobile social learning environment for students’ learning of programming. We proposed a model to assess programming students’ interactions in the learning environments. Along with the model, we propose some guidelines to incorporate the learning environment in order to enhance the teaching and learning of programming. As future work, we plan to use this model to analyse course knowledge exchange in other related or non-related courses that use social media environment to support learning.