Learning for Mastery in an Introductory Programming Course Jana Jacková University of Zilina Faculty of Management Science and Informatics Univerzitna 8215/1 010 26 Zilina, Slovakia Jana.Jackova@fri.uniza.sk ABSTRACT Teachers always look for new ways to make their teaching more effective. œThe data show that mastery learning programs have positive effects on student achievement œ [1]. We introduce work in progress of an educational research of teaching/learning (T/L) effectiveness in case the Mastery Learning (ML) approach is used in an introductory course of programming. 2. RESEARCH This academic year teaching staff members have been discussing changes of the Informatics study programme for future during their regular weekly meetings. They have interviewed senior students and asked for opinions on this topic. Some of the students mentioned the need for a more systematic study approach during the semester. They would like to see results from their regular tests and coursework reflected in their final mark more. This demand is very close to some of the ML features. At the beginning of the winter semester, 100 students of the Informatics programme were asked by the author (i.e. their teaching assistant in 6 study groups) to fill in a questionnaire aimed at finding: a) reasons why they chose our faculty, and b) what their expectations are [4]. According to results of input tests at the beginning of the spring semester these students were divided into 1 experimental (EG) and 1 control (CG) group with 3 subgroups each. The ML approach is used in the EG where some particular features of Bloom ™s ML and Keller ™s Personalized System of Instruction (PSI) approaches are combined. Hypothesis: the effectiveness of T/L process will be higher when the ML approach is used. Partial hypothesis H1: the performance of students in cognitive domain in the final test will be higher in the EG than in the CG. H2: in the end of the experiment, students in the EG will value T/L process more positive than students in the CG. H3: in the end of the experiment, students in the EG will assess their relationship to the teacher better than students in the CG. H4: in the end of the experiment, students in the EG will recommend teaching Basics of Informatics with the ML approach. Categories and Subject Descriptors K.3.2 [Computers and Education]: Computer and Information Science Education “ computer science education, curriculum. General Terms Algorithms, Design, Experimentation, Management, Measurement, Performance. Human Factors, Keywords Effectiveness, Introductory Course of Programming, Mastery Learning , Methods, PSI, Pedagogical Approaches, Research. 1. INTRODUCTION All 1st year students doing bachelor ™s programmes (about 300 students each year) have to pass an introductory course of programming. It is called Basics of Informatics [2], [3] and consists of a two-hour lecture (not compulsory), an hourly tutorial and an hourly laboratory work (both compulsory) per week during the winter and spring semesters. The LMS Moodle system is being used as an addition to the traditional face-to-face approach but it depends on every single teacher how deeply and how effectively he or she uses it. The input level of students ™ programming knowledge varies greatly. Quite a lot of students drop the subject during the year. Some of them leave the university, whereas others repeat the course next year. Each teaching assistant uses his own approaches in order to manage different input programming knowledge of his or her students. We have not measured and/or compared effectiveness of our methods yet. 3.

/lp/association-for-computing-machinery/learning-for-mastery-in-an-introductory-programming-course-IKa00LlV8M