Comparison of traditional lecture and flipped classroom for teaching programming

Programming courses in undergraduate education seem to be predestined for a flipped classroom approach as learning programming requires a high personal contribution on the one hand and on the other hand, course participants typically start with a wide range of previous knowledge and skills. Within a flipped classroom students can organize their learning phases self-reliantly and put an individual amount of effort into each learning objective. Whilst in a traditional lecture it is not easy to motivate students, the flipped classroom requires students' active involvement per se. Besides all these advantages, setting up such a course requires a high initial effort for the lecturer. Furthermore, students might prefer a lecture, as usually the work load is higher in a comparable flipped classroom course. Based on the idea of flipping a beginners programming course, we firstly explored the effects of a flipped classroom approach on an elective advanced programming course with a smaller student group. The paper compares the new course design and its effects on the students learning, on the teaching, as well as on the course preparation with the former traditional lecture. The comparison is based on a survey, the students' evaluation feedback and on the examination results.