Applying PBL in Teaching Programming: an Experience Report

Tutorial Education Program (TEP) is an initiative from Brazilian government to develop education quality in different areas of knowledge, as its main aim to decrease students’ evasion and promotion of academic success. PET-Informática group from Federal University of Pernambuco (UFPE) has invested in these activities, in particular, to teach programming, one of the disciplines in which students have lower grades in technology courses. In this context, this paper describes an experience of an extension course in Python, using the active learning approach Problem-Based Learning (PBL). This course, ministered in two weeks, made possible the construction of a PBL model to teach Python, based in the xPBL methodology described by Santos & Rodrigues (2016) and the lessons learned with this practical experiment. As the main contribution, this experience stands out the possibility to apply this course to different audiences with different levels of education, and also the dissemination of PBL approach in teaching programming.

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