The More You Teach, the Less They Learn: Effects of Teaching Approaches on Learning Performance

Typically, an introductory programming course is a required course for business college undergraduate students majoring in information systems. Different instructors may have different approaches to teaching this course: Some give lectures and assign programming exercises, while others only assign programming exercises without giving lectures. This research deliberately compared the effects of the two teaching approaches on learning performance. Results indicated that: (1) both approaches are effective, and (2) the programming-exercises-only approach is more effective than the other approach. Further analysis indicated that students’ current programming skills, prior programming experience, and grade expectation, are significant antecedents of students’ performance in terms of their final grades for the course. These results suggested that when teaching introductory programming courses, instructors may consider choosing the student-centered active learning over the traditional lecture format in order to improve students’ learning performance.