A scalable and incremental project-based learning approach for CS1/CS2 courses

Authors:
Carlos Vega;Camilo Jiménez;Jorge Villalobos
Affiliations:
Universidad de los Andes, Systems and Computing Engineering Department, Bogotá, Colombia;Universidad de los Andes, Systems and Computing Engineering Department, Bogotá, Colombia;Universidad de los Andes, Systems and Computing Engineering Department, Bogotá, Colombia
Venue:
Education and Information Technologies
Year:
2013

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Abstract

Cupi2 is a project that promotes an integral solution to problems in teaching/learning programming using a large and structured courseware, and a student-centered pedagogical model (Villalobos and Casallas 2006a; Villalobos et al. 2009a, b; Jiménez and Villalobos 2010). As a cornerstone of Cupi2, we use incremental projects intended to motivate students, and to develop high-level programming skills throughout their learning. A critical factor of these projects is that they are specially designed so that students are engaged in activities that complete a scaffold of a complete program. However, both the scaffolds and the activities needed to complete these incomplete programs must be arranged carefully by instructors in order to stress the adequate contents for students, and at the same time, to help those students acquire programming skills effectively. Jointly, scaffold versions need to comply with high quality standards, representing a high time consuming activity for instructors, and therefore, increased costs for institutions. In this paper, we describe the way we overcome these challenges using a software factory that supports the projects' design in a scalable way.