The Impact of Learning Styles in Introductory Programming Learning
Lílian Cândida, Silva do Carmo, María José Marcelino, António José Mendes · 2007
Abstract- There is a widespread concern about the difficulties felt by novice students in introductory programming courses. During the last years, new tools and methodologies were proposed to support students in their programming learning activities and improve the teaching quality. In general, these proposals focused on the effectiveness of teaching and learning processes. Our work focuses on students ’ behavior and preferences when solving specific programming problems. We applied Felder and Soloman’s Index of Learning Styles instrument to 97 students enrolled in an introductory programming course to collect information about their learning styles. Next, during four months we observed some student’s behavior when solving programming problems. Then, we compared the data obtained with the students learning styles to identity some possible patterns and verify if there is some correlation between students ’ learning styles and their performance. We also used the students ’ final grades in the course to see if we could find some pattern. In this paper we will describe in detail this experience and discuss some of the most relevant results.