Programming education at high schools and universities: Design, development, and assessment

Abstract

We designed, developed, and evaluated computer programming education at high schools and universities in 2012 and 2013 to offer students an opportunity to experience practical programming. We provided a programming course to a high school, preparing content-rich materials. In order to generate motivation for learning in students, we set "to create practical applications" as a goal of the course. In 2012, only a few students could create practical applications; however, in 2013, we improved the teaching methods and by the end of the course, almost half of the participants were able to produce practical applications. In addition, some students applied their programs for the Live E! science contest and they received prizes in 2012 and two students applied and one of them received a prize in 2013. An additional notable outcome of the course that we provided was the extent to which first-year students became interested in programming.