of Prerecorded Lectures for Teaching Introductory Programming
Glenn Smith, Colin Fidge · 2008
Teaching introductory programming is a notoriously challenging problem in any information technology or computer science course. Failure and dropout rates are usually high, and many students seem unable to grasp the notion of solving problems algorithmically. Given contemporary students’ fondness for multimedia styles of presentation, we conducted an experiment on the eectiveness of providing prerecorded mini-lectures in a rst-year programming subject. Although we found only a weak quantitative correlation between students’ use of the prerecorded material and their nal grades, anecdotal feedback on the experiment was overwhelmingly positive, suggesting that students’ perceptions of the subject were improved.