Enhance students’ motivation to learn programming by using direct visual feed-back

The technical subjects chosen are within programming. Using image-processing algorithms as means to provide direct visual feedback for learning basic C/C++. The pedagogical approach is within a PBL framework and is based on dialogue and collaborative learning. At the same time the intention was to establish a community of practice among the students and the teachers. A direct visual feedback and a higher level of merging between the artistic, creative, and technical lectures have been the focus of motivation as well as a complete restructuring of the elements of the technical lectures. The paper will present the test results based on over 200 students, gathered over a period of three years.
The paper will explain different steps of the new programming courses in detail, and relate students test data to each of the initiatives causing the leaps of improvement. Furthermore the students’ technical abilities and enhanced balance between the interdisciplinary disciplines of the study are analyzed. The conclusion is that the technical courses have got a higher status for the
students. The students now see it as a very important basis for their further study, and their learning results have improved to a satisfactory level seen from the study board’s point of view.