A Comparative Evaluation on Methods of Teaching Computer Programming

Learning programming is typically regarded as a challenging task by both educators and learners. The face-to-face learning method alone is likely insufficient to promote effective teaching and learning solutions. Thus, having a suitable teaching method can be useful in various situations and encourages learners to actively and effectively participate in programming classes. Likewise, having appropriate formation of different programming learning methods and environments to influence learners' computational thinking is something significant. As such, this paper presents an analysis and comparison of the related works on any promising methods that are able promote a better and efficient way of learning programming. In the meantime, it suggests any possible direction for future work by conducting a comparative evaluation. As far as this study is concerned, several methods of teaching programming such as visualization, game-based, robotics, problem-solving, code tracing, simulation and pair programming have been analyzed and compared. Results of this study indicated that visualization and game-based method are the most effective formation methods. Using visualization and games-based methods in teaching programming can help to enhance learners' programming concepts in terms of enhancing the learners' cognitive ability to develop a mental model, increase their engagement and stimulate their abstract thinking in cognitive development.