An Investigation into the On-Line Teaching of Programming Languages.

Abstract This paper describes an investigation into the teaching of a programming language by methods of computer‐assisted instruction (CAI). The subjects were first‐year university students who were divided into groups to enable comparisons to be made first between CAI lessons and conventional lectures and secondly between on‐line examples sessions and the usual demonstration classes. The selection into groups were determined mainly on the student's performance in a programming aptitude test but other factors such as previous programming experience, availability and objections to the methods of instruction were considered. All students were given a post‐test in an effort to determine how much they had assimilated during the week. An analysis of covariance on these two scores gives estimates of the effects of placement in a particular group. Conclusions are drawn and suggestions made as to how future investigations should be made in the light of this experiment.