Research to Practice in Computer Programming Course using Flipped Classroom

This Research to Practice Full Paper presented a Flipped Classroom (FC) approach to teaching a computer programming course. This approach increased students' academic performance, course satisfaction and learning motivation by providing more time for active learning.There is an intense need for the studies of FC approach in higher education, especially in computer programming courses. Although FC pedagogy has achieved great success in K-12 schools, there is rare quantitative research on programming courses in higher education.This paper introduced a FC approach to teaching computer program course, and described in detail how to arrange pre-class activities and in-class activities. Pre-class activities were recommended to be arranged by time. 5 days before class, release course material and open access to programming practice. Students began to study and practice by themselves. 2 days before class, Students were required to complete pre-class test. 1 day before class, the teaching assistant provided a pre-class test analysis report. The lecturer prepared the coming class based on the report. In-class activities consisted of four parts. First, the lecturer explained in detail the common problems in the pre-class test. Second, the lecturer checked the problem-solving by asking questions. Third, students discussed in teams. Fourth, students gave presentations on the advanced topics.To assess the effectiveness of the FC approach, the study was conducted at the course Swift Language Programming Practice for undergraduate students. Students were divided into two groups. One group implemented traditional pedagogy, and the other group implemented FC pedagogy. The effect of the two groups was analyzed by teaching data collected during 2019-2021. The nonparametric independent-samples Kruskal-Wallis test was used to measure the changes in course performance and student satisfaction. The results showed that by introducing FC to teach computer programming courses, course performance (measured by examination results) and student satisfaction (measured by course questionnaires) were significantly improved.The contribution of this paper was to propose a FC approach suitable for college programming course, and through quantitative statistical methods to analyze the teaching effect of the course. The results showed that the approach significantly improved the course performance and student satisfaction. The FC approach of this paper can be regarded as a reference for similar course in college.