Students learning software programming: Innovative strategies for learning and assessment

Abstract

Students demand engaging approaches from academics. Employers demand soft skills from graduates. Traditional approaches to teaching programming are seen as boring and fail to develop the necessary soft skills. In addition, the software packages that are used in the STEM courses are changing very rapidly, leading to significant stresses on academics who feel that they need to keep up with all the changes as the “Academic as Domain Expert”. A different approach has been developed that both enthuses students by providing an employability based context for learning and also delivers high achievement and excellent soft skills. This presentation will present the consequences of the “Academic as Learning to Learn Expert” model in the design of the Learning, Teaching and Assessment strategies and the reduction in the stresses on academics. It will also demonstrate new assessment approaches which strongly develop soft skills for employability whilst ensuring that technical skills are demonstrated.