Effect of FAQ in Introductory Programming - an Experiment
| Autor: | Cheng-Yuan Lu, 呂承遠 |
|---|---|
| Rok vydání: | 2011 |
| Druh dokumentu: | 學位論文 ; thesis |
| Popis: | 99 When talking an introductory programming course, novice programmers will encounter many problems (or rather, “puzzlements” ). Failing to solute there puzzlements by themselves, they may become frustrated and want to give up. As the course proceeds, some of these learners will eventually become totally uninterested and unmotivated, causing them to drop out. There are several reasons why these students cannot solve the puzzlements they have when learning programming. (1)Traditional oriental cultures tend to discourage question-asking. (2)With a lack of experience in question-asking, learners do not know how to ask.(3)Learners may not even know what their problems are. In this research, an FAQ(Frequently Asked Questions) system was developed. The purpose of this system is to help learners find answers to their questions. The hope is that with the help of this FAQ systems, learners may be able to find satisfactory answers to at least some of their questions, these by helping them not to give up on learning programming so easily. The working of this FAQ system is as follows. 1. The questions address potential puzzlements that novice programmers might have. 2. These questions originate from three sources: (a) the instructor’s experience, (b) questions posted on the BBS(Bulletin Board System), (c)questions asked by learners on the MSN(Microsoft Networks Messenger). 3. For every weekly assignment, these will be hints available on the FAQ system one day before the due day. These hints are designed to help novices do their assignments more easily. To see how this FAQ system may help novices learn programming, an experiment was carried out. The purposes of this experiment were (a)to see whether the use of this FAQ system would reduce the number of those who give up on learning programming and (b)to see whether the use of this system could help novices maintain a certain level of interest in programming. The results of this experimentation were the following. (1)The use of this system did not help novices maintain a certain level of interest, at least not in a significant way. (2)The use of this system appeared to have helped reducing the number of novices who gave up on programming. (3)Novices felt that the use of this system could help them learn introductory programming. They also indicated in the questionnaire that the FAQ system was easy to use. |
| Databáze: | Networked Digital Library of Theses & Dissertations |
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