Treffer: A Practical Learning and Teaching Strategy for Online Programming Courses.

Object-oriented Programming is a challenging topic for students and lecturers alike. Several studies addressed this issue and proposed different strategies to motivate students and achieve higher success rates. In this paper, we present a practical learning and teaching strategy for online programming courses. We also report on the results of implementing the proposed approach. The strategy takes a practical approach and focusses on the fundamentals of programming rather than a specific programming language. The lecturer played the role of moderator rather than having the traditional central role in a classroom. This research used a four-stage action research method. We used the Rapid Prototyping Model to create learning resources. The strategy was applied to 86 junior university students in an introductory Object-Oriented Programming course during a full semester. A sample of 31% (27 students) was chosen from the population using the random sampling technique. The results show favourable students‘ evaluations of the materials and approach used during the course. Students had high levels of motivation and recognised that the knowledge they received had practical applications. We recommend giving special attention to teamwork, communication between students and the instructor, and diversifying learning materials. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Journal of African Education & Traditional Learning Systems is the property of Adonis & Abbey Publishers Ltd. and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites without the copyright holder's express written permission. Additionally, content may not be used with any artificial intelligence tools or machine learning technologies. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)