The effect of authentic task-based practices in programming teaching on students' academic achievement, attitudes, problem solving and creative thinking skills

The aim of the study is to determine the effect of using authentic task-based practices in programming teaching on students' academic achievement, attitudes, retention levels, problem solving and creative thinking skills. The participants of the study is second grade students studying at Erciyes University Computer Technologies Department in 2017- 2018 academic year who has learned basics of Web Design and Research Methods and Techniques courses. One of the second grade class was appointed as experimental group and the other one as control group. There are 30 students in the experimental group and 33 students in the control group. During the application the authentic task-based practices was used in programming teaching to the experimental group's students and traditional teaching method was used to the control group's students. In this study, sequential explanatory design that is one of the mixed method research designs in which both qualitative and quantitative data are used together. In the study, the quantitative data was obtained by experimental study design with the pretest-posttest control group. The qualitative dimension of the study based on action research design. SPSS 21 which is one of the data analysis package programs for social sciences was used for the analysis of quantitative data. To analyze of quantitative data, cluster analysis, arithmetic mean, standard deviation, percentage, frequency, shapiro-wilk test, dependent groups t test, independent groups t test, MWU and Wilcoxon signed rank test were used. Computer-aided qualitative data analysis package program was used to analyze the qualitative data and the data was analyzed by content analysis method. The achievement test prepared by the researcher is composed of 28 questions. The mean difficulty of achievement test was calculated to be 0.46 and the KR-20 reliability coefficient was 0.81. The achievement test was applied to both the experimental and control groups as pretest, posttest and retention test. Attitude scale toward computer programming developed by Başer (2013) was used to determine students' attitudes towards programming. The scale is designed likert type grading with five choices. The scale composed of 4 sub-factors and 38 items. For the overall scale the cronbach-α reliability coefficient was 0.95. Problem Solving Skills Inventory, which was used to determine students' problem solving skills, is developed by Heppner and Petersen (1982) and adapted to Turkish by Şahin, Şahin and Heppner (1993). The inventory composed of 35 items, but 3 items are excluded from the scoring and 32 items are evaluated. The inventory is a Likert type grading with six choices and the cronbach-α reliability coefficient of the inventory was found to be 0.88. The markings for each item were scored between 1 and 6. The total score range of the inventory is between 32–192. To determine students' creative thinking skills, "How Much Creative Are You?" scale developed by Raudsepp (1977) and adapted to Turkish by Çoban (1999) was used. The scale, prepared in a Likert type grading with five choices, is composed of 50 items. The cronbach-α coefficient of the scale was found to be 0.95. If the total score obtained from the scale is between 100 and 80, it's accepted as the creativity level is high, between 79 and 60 the creativity level is above average level, between 59 and 40 the creativity level is medium, between 39 and -20 the creativity level is below average level and between-19 and -100 the people are not creative. Both quantitative and qualitative data obtained from the study support each other. As a result of the analysis of quantitative data, it was determined that academic achievement of experimental group students using authentic task based practices was higher than the control group students using traditional method in programming teaching. In the same way it was determined that the retention level of experimental group students' knowledge was higher than control group students'. It was observed that experimental and control group students have positive attitude towards programming. However, the attitudes level of experimental group students towards programming were higher than the attitudes level of control group students. As a result of the analysis of the problem solving skills inventory, the problem solving skills level of the experimental group students were higher than the control group students'. According to the analysis of the students' creativity level, it was determined that the creativity levels of the experimental group students were at the middle level and the control group students' were below the average level. Opinions about authentic task based practices used in programming teaching emerged by the the analyze of qualitative data. These opinions are feelings and thoughts about authentic tasks, positive situations experienced in authentic tasks, problems encountered in authentic tasks, the effect of authentic tasks on the course and the desire to use in other courses.