An empirical study: learning programming using e-learning

Abstract

Learning programming is not an easy task and students often find this course difficult to understand and pass. A fundamental factor which affects students’ performance is their learning efficacy and motivation. In the classroom, educators know how to motivate their students and how to exploit this knowledge to optimize their teaching when a student shows demotivation signs. In eLearning environments it is much more difficult to evaluate student motivation level. The study identified 19 research papers in teaching and learning programming using eLearning. The papers are derived from a number of digital databases which were published in the last two decades. This study found that a majority of the research in eLearning focuses on student knowledge and skills in programming. To motivate the student, visualization, simulation, animation and game-based approaches have been used in the learning process. These approaches focus on making the interaction attractive rather than identifying and diagnosing student motivation state in the eLearning systems. To enhance the learning process in programming using eLearning, student motivation model needs to be considered.