The effect of deductive and inductive teaching methods in an introductory programming course
Jen Symons, Heather E. Dillon, Joseph P. Hoffbeck · 2024
Many first-and second-year engineering students are required to complete an introductory programming course as part of their program.Typically, class time within these courses is divided into traditional instructor lecture and student work time interacting with the software.This study aimed to determine the effect of different instructor teaching methods on student quiz performance as it related to challenging concepts (i.e.functions, conditional statements, and loops).A Latin square design was used to assess 3 different teaching methods across 3 course sections of students, all taught by the same instructor.Teaching methods included a single deductive lecture explaining the concept, a similar deductive approach that divided content into two smaller lectures within one session, and an inductive approach that presented code within an applied context.After the teaching methods were delivered, points from quizzes completed by students were divided into categories based on the three course concepts.The effect of teaching method on percentage of points earned by students for each concept was assessed by ANOVA.Teaching method showed a trend, but failed to achieve statistical significance (p=0.11).However, post-hoc tests indicated a significant difference between the control teaching method and the inductive teaching method (p=0.04).The control teaching method yielded the best student quiz scores, whereas the inductive teaching method yielded the worst scores.These results support a deductive approach when teaching first and second year students introductory programming skills, as opposed to an inductive approach that may be more well suited outside foundational engineering courses.