Metacognitive-Based Collaborative Programming: A Novel Approach to Enhance Learning Performance in Programming Courses

Abstract

Students’ computational thinking and programming skills may grow due to collaborative programming. But as the researchers have noted, students frequently do not use metacognition to manage their cognitive activities while collaborating, which negatively affects learning. This study created a metacognition-based collaborative programming (MCP) system to improve students’ performance in collaborative programming. A seven-week study examined how the approach affected students’ performance in programming courses. The 88 middle school students were split into two groups: the experimental group received the metacognition-based collaborative programming approach, and the control group received the conventional computer-supported collaborative programming approach. The results indicated that the metacognitive-based collaborative programming approach enhanced students’ academic scores in programming courses and their computational thinking tendencies.