The present paper introduces some strategies used in teaching an Informatics course for non-IT first year university students. The strategies were developed during several years, using the main principles of flexible and blended learning. The methodology has been based on the results of experiments with students from social sciences, economics and technical faculties. Numerous tests were carried out to find out the level of prior knowledge and the preferred learning styles of each student. According to the results, students were divided into separate groups within an e-learning environment. The authors considered three main aspects: student's background, the level of knowledge and the most suitable style of learning. The success of the experiment presented in this paper is demonstrated by comparing the academic results of the test group who was taught using the new strategy with the reference group, taught in a common way.
Abstract-The present paper demonstrates the teaching approach in programming basics course for novices: schoolchildren of different ages and schoolteachers. This programming course was developed at the Institute of Informatics at Tallinn University of Technology in Tallinn, Estonia and it based on many years experience in teaching programming for non-IT first year students. The main aim of the chosen teaching approach in the course is to raise the motivation and keep the learners' interest in programming field on the high level. The idea of developed teaching technique is the implementation of the visual programming before a serious textual coding. Furthermore, authors suggest readers some ways and methods to overcome learners' difficulties in the first stage in a textual coding.
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