Developing instructional strategies and recommendations from an introductory programming course in higher education

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Tezin Türü: Doktora

Tezin Yürütüldüğü Kurum: Orta Doğu Teknik Üniversitesi, Eğitim Fakültesi, Bilgisayar ve Öğretim Teknolojileri Eğitimi Bölümü, Türkiye

Tezin Onay Tarihi: 2018

Öğrenci: KADİR YÜCEL KAYA

Danışman: KÜRŞAT ÇAĞILTAY

Özet:

Purpose of this study is to design and develop an introductory programming course for higher education level and extract instructional strategies and recommendations. The course was offered as a visual programming course at the Department of Computer Education and Instructional Technology in Middle East Technical University. MIT App Inventor (a visual programming environment to develop applications for Android OS) was used in the course. The course was 14 weeks long. Basic concepts of programming were offered through a project and product focused introductory programming course. Design-Based Research methodology was used as the research framework of the study. Under this framework, qualitative data were collected through interviews, observations, and documents. Data were collected iteratively to reshape the design of the course and the instructional strategies until it is appropriate and substantial. Data collection were 2 semester long which included observations throughout the course, interviews at the end of each semester, examination of discussions and products of the students. Results of this study aimed to provide an instructional prescription for the instructors who are to develop an introductory programming course. An effective, efficient, and motivating course design could help both learners and instructors for the first step of programming education which could lead to an advanced level programming education and help students to grasp computational thinking.