Enhanced Learning and Improved Productivity of Students' using Project Based Learning Approaches for Programming Courses

Abstract

Active learning techniques surpassed traditional teacher-centric approaches owing to their benefits of better learning from the stakeholders. The selection of a specific learning strategy varies from one course to another for productive results. Many students face difficulties in understanding programming subjects especially when it comes to applying it practically for application developments, since the curriculum permits only a certain number of specific programs to be implemented and some courses will have only theoretical subjects without a practical component. Thus, it becomes a need of the hour to make students productive in order to be confident in applying concepts learnt to the application development. The proposed method of applying a combination of project based learning involving collaborative learning will prove to be an effective platform for the students to enhance their design & development skills. This experimentation has been applied to a total of about 420 engineering students and the average performance in the university examinations as well as their demonstration/oral presentation, viva answering skills are considered as metrics for measurement. Apart from this, students’ ability to face challenges is gauged through their ability to excel in placement drives for selection to various companies. This approach has resulted in a significant improvement in students’ performance in the university examinations with upto 54% of the students securing higher grades. Apart from this, it has been estimated that there is an improvement in placement rate of upto 10-15 % along with increase in no. of offerings for the individual students.