Blended Approach for Deep Learning: A Framework for Teaching

Undergraduate Computer Programming Courses

Mohammad Tafiqur Rahman

Department of Business, Marketing, and Law, University of South-Eastern Norway, Norway

Keywords: Blended Approach, Computer Programming Courses, Deep Learning, Flipped Classroom, Knowledge

Construction, University Pedagogy, TEE Approach, Traditional Teaching.

Abstract: Teaching computer programming (CP) courses demands cutting-edge course practicalities that include (i)

updated course design with adequate content, (ii) modern pedagogy-enabled course conduction, and (iii)

course completion with adequate practically implementable knowledge. However, meeting such requirements

is not possible only through the traditional teaching (TT) approach, nor by any specific or individual ap-

proaches practiced in modern teaching. We need combined approaches to meet learners’ desires and industry

needs. I propose a teaching framework that blends traditional and flipped classroom (FC) approaches to fa-

cilitate deep learning toward essential knowledge construction on CP and provide practical experiences for

software system development. In the proposed framework, the TT approach emphasizes theoretical under-

standing, whereas the FC approach focuses on active engagement, active participation, and active learning.

The TEE (theory-example-exercise) approach binds the chosen approaches together, where the theory part is

handled in the TT approach, and the example and exercise parts are processed in the FC approach. Since I

successfully applied this blended approach framework to teaching undergraduate CP courses at a Norwegian

university, I believe it will be suitable not only for courses in this discipline but also in other disciplines with

necessary modifications.

1 INTRODUCTION

Technological advancement has introduced many op-

portunities to our daily life—from waking up in the

morning to going to bed at night, our daily activities

are, somehow, affected by digital tools. The educa-

tion sector is not outside that trend. Rather, it is the

most emergent area for digital development (Lundin

et al., 2018; O’Flaherty & Phillips, 2015). Exploring

and analyzing the technology-rich teaching and learn-

ing environment is essential to identifying different

challenges and opportunities for designing new

courses or upgrading old ones (Divjak et al., 2022).

Thus, learning computer programming (CP) is now

treated as a requirement to shine in this digital age

(O’Flaherty & Phillips, 2015). To facilitate students

with smooth teaching and learning experiences in CP

courses, we need to incorporate essential technologies

into our teaching philosophies along with suitable

pedagogy.

Because of its relevance and applicability in real

life, learning CP is always on a student’s priority list

of study (Sambe et al., 2021). We have already expe-

rienced how online teaching platforms preserved the

education sector during COVID-19 lockdowns (Barr

et al., 2020) and are now observing how digitalization

is ruling the world during post-pandemic situations.

Such technological advancement is not possible with-

out innovative digitalization (Müller et al., 2021), and

to do so, essential knowledge of CP is crucial. Hence,

programmers are in higher demand in the job market,

making current and future students extremely ambi-

tious about their careers (Ouhbi & Pombo, 2020). For

proper knowledge construction, they expect to ac-

quire practice-oriented knowledge from the course

and gain real-time experience to fulfill their desires

(Feijóo-García et al., 2021).

Teachers should inform their students that

knowledge is not limited to the two cover pages of the

course book or the provided course content; a clear

understanding of the topics learned is necessary.

Technology-oriented learning can help students gain

such an in-depth understanding of the subject (Dug-

girala et al., 2021). Along with the content from

394

Rahman, M.

Blended Approach for Deep Learning: A Framework for Teaching Undergraduate Computer Programming Courses.

DOI: 10.5220/0011959900003470

In Proceedings of the 15th International Conference on Computer Supported Education (CSEDU 2023) - Volume 2, pages 394-402

ISBN: 978-989-758-641-5; ISSN: 2184-5026

 2023 by SCITEPRESS – Science and Technology Publications, Lda. Under CC license (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0)

course books, essential online resources can be incor-

porated into lectures, assignments, projects, and ex-

aminations to stimulate students’ critical thinking and

train them with the analytical know-how to solve

practical problems (Einhorn, 2012). Thus, students

may become habituated with self-learning ap-

proaches not only for answering examinations crea-

tively but also for solving real-time problems in their

careers (Sambe et al., 2021).

Therefore, they require deeper insight and under-

standing of the course content defined by their teach-

ers with a clear indication of the goal and outcomes

of their study and training (Howie & Bangnall, 2015;

Paez, 2017). For deep learning, students are expected

to be active in learning processes that include under-

standing the problem and utilizing proper logic and

evidence to identify and implement solutions

(Entwistle, 2000). They are encouraged to collaborate

with their peers and teachers not only to solve the

problem but also to evaluate their proposed ideas.

Thus, deeper knowledge is constructed (Biggs &

Tang, 2011). In this way, deep learning ensures that

students have a more comprehensive grasp of the sub-

ject being studied and can successfully apply their

gained knowledge to the field (Howie & Bangnall,

2013).

To prepare students for their careers, a student-

centered, career-focused teaching philosophy needs

to be emphasized and applied. Since the traditional

way of teaching is mostly lecture-based (Erdogmus &

Péraire, 2017), students get little or limited opportu-

nities for discussion, practice, and exploration (Lin,

2021). On the other hand, the student-centric flipped

classroom (FC) approach is also limited to provide

the abovementioned facilities to students as it requires

extra time and effort from both teachers and students

(Amresh et al. 2013). For example, in traditional FC

approach, teachers are required to prepare and upload

video lectures and students need to go through them

before attending the session (Elliot, 2014). Thus, to

facilitate deep learning for CP students, the student-

centric FC concept can be blended with the traditional

teaching (TT) approach, as suggested by Divjak et al.

(2022) and Gren (2020). But how can such blending

be done? Finding a way leads to this study’s research

question:

How does the blended approach contribute to

deep learning and knowledge construction?

In the following section, related works on recently

used pedagogical approaches are reviewed, especially

for teaching CP courses. The induced framework is

presented and described in section 3, and its applica-

tion and evaluation are discussed in sections 4 and 5,

respectively. Finally, section 6 concludes the paper,

along with research limitations and future research di-

rections.

2 RELATED WORKS

Academia is no longer just a privileged knowledge

provider but fosters a dialogical space to create soci-

etal values and human worth (Class et al., 2021).

The current academic course design at universities

has been highly influenced by social networking,

technology, and practice-oriented teaching and learn-

ing (Nørgård et al., 2019). Thus, teachers try different

approaches before selecting ones that are appropriate

to their classes and updating them accordingly.

In recent years, teachers of CP courses have advo-

cated an FC approach (Fetaji et al., 2019), bringing

in-class activities out of the classroom (Fulton, 2012).

Although widely tried, applying the FC technique in

CP is challenging because it covers not only the the-

ory, methods, and tools for developing new informat-

ics solutions (Feijóo-García et al., 2021) but also ac-

cepts students from non-scientific backgrounds for

admission (Sambe et al., 2021). We are experiencing

increased student enrollment in computing education,

especially after the COVID-19 pandemic, when we

were forced to switch to digital and online platforms

(Kawash et al., 2021; Arima et al., 2021).

Although mentioned as an active learning meth-

odology, Olivindo et al. (2021) incorporated the gam-

ification technique within the FC approach to im-

prove students’ acceptance and in-class engagement

during the COVID-19 pandemic. They reported

higher student satisfaction with their adopted ap-

proach. Similarly, Lin (2021) combined the learning

diagnostic methodology with the FC approach to sup-

port students with learning diagnosis activities. Ac-

cording to Lin (2021), simply following the FC ap-

proach is not sufficient to provide CP students with

adequate learning support or necessary feedback be-

fore class. Lin (2021) also reported outstanding per-

formance for students who followed the adopted ap-

proach.

El-Glaly (2020) applied the FC concept to her

teaching by assigning several related research papers

to the class and engaging students through a discus-

sion on selected research papers (three papers per

week) and presentations (one student per week). Alt-

hough the students’ and research papers’ selection

criteria were never discussed, she was supportive of

including necessary lectures and providing students

with hands-on experience where applicable. Paez

(2017) shared his experience with adopting the FC

Blended Approach for Deep Learning: A Framework for Teaching Undergraduate Computer Programming Courses

395

approach in software engineering courses and demon-

strated that students are required to maintain a mini-

mum workload during the semester (four to six hours

of homework per week for a four-hour long weekly

class). This allows for an easy estimation of the dedi-

cated workload for students who take several courses

per semester, and each course is instructed using the

FC method.

Although Paez (2017) asserts that a FC method–

supported teaching approach is suitable for smaller

classes with adequate teaching support (two teachers

for 15 students), Marasco et al. (2017) found the FC

approach helpful in teaching around 800 students

with different programming backgrounds enrolled in

the first year of their undergraduate study. They ex-

tensively utilized the online learning management

platform to conduct the introductory CP course by

posting weekly video lectures, hosting embedded

quizzes, and facilitating student collaboration on

course exercises. However, the authors for both arti-

cles emphasized, like earlier authors, the extensive re-

designing of course practicalities for running courses

in the FC format.

According to Barr et al. (2020), laboratory ses-

sions and group work suffer tremendously on online

platforms, although CP students engage and learn bet-

ter while being tied to programming activities (El-

Glaly, 2020). Hence, Gren (2020) claims that the FC

approach may facilitate students in getting better

grades, but a clear understanding of students’ percep-

tions of the course is always missing. Gren suggests a

blended learning platform for proper knowledge con-

struction and for its successful establishment. Fur-

thermore, Strayer (2012) recommends enabling or

carefully integrating information technology (FC ap-

proach, for example) in regular in-class activities (TT

approach, for example). Such an approach can pro-

vide students with an effective, efficient learning ex-

perience; thus, a meaningful subjective linking of the

materials they learned in the course can be demon-

strated (Garrison & Kanuka, 2004; Strayer, 2012).

These meaningful learning experiences point to the

deep learning of the concepts/topics covered in the

course (Beattie et al., 1997; Howie & Bangnall,

2013).

3 THE FRAMEWORK

Research and discussion on teaching and learning is

an ongoing process; the latest ideas and techniques

replace old or existing ones for better outcomes. Dif-

ferent approaches focus differently on the two main

entities of the process (teacher and student), and their

activities, collaboration, and communication.

Vaughan et al. (2013) defined blended learning as a

pedagogical and technological innovation that is sig-

nificantly redesigned to enhance students’ engage-

ment in the entire learning process. They emphasize

bringing both physical and online learning activities

into the process rather than simply adding online

components. Koehler and Mishra (2009) suggest a

proper balance between technology, pedagogy, and

content knowledge in course design and conduction.

Figure 1 illustrates how the blended approach contrib-

utes to students’ deep learning and knowledge con-

struction in CP. If sufficiently modified and up-

graded, this framework can also be applied to courses

in other disciplines.

Figure 1: Framework for the blended teaching approach.

The proposed teaching and learning framework in

Figure 1 combines the FC approach with the TT ap-

proach (hence, conceptualized as a blended approach)

(Strayer, 2012). Here, the TT approach works to de-

velop an adequate theoretical understanding of the

course content (as suggested by McNally et al.

(2017)), whereas the FC approach focuses on con-

firming students’ active engagement, participation,

and learning. This combination of entities constructs

deeper knowledge of the course content. The overall

knowledge construction process is elaborated on in

the rest of this section.

To actuate the blending, I introduced the theory-

example-exercise (TEE) approach to deliver lectures

for CP courses by following a static order of three

steps: (i) theory or concept, (ii) coding examples, and

(iii) testing exercises. In this approach, the teacher

starts each class with a regular lecture in the tradi-

tional way. This includes concept development,

providing study materials, and offering problem-solv-

ing guidance with sufficient activity instructions

(Kim et al., 2014). As soon as theory building is con-

CSEDU 2023 - 15th International Conference on Computer Supported Education

396

firmed, the teacher provides related examples (prac-

tice coding) for deeper understanding of the

topic/concept and for preparing students for problem-

solving (exercises) sessions. This unobstructed vision

of course conduction is essential in the FC approach

because it protects students from being disengaged

with the course and its designed activities (Strayer,

2012). To facilitate quick access to the course con-

tent, the teacher must share all the covered materials

(lecture, examples, exercises, homework, etc.) on the

online platform (e.g., Canvas, Learning Management

System, GitHub) before or immediately after each

session.

Practice coding can be conducted in three ways:

(i) coding together: coding is done by the teacher and

the students follow him/her; (ii) supervised coding:

the code is provided by the teacher in a non-copyable

format (e.g., jpeg, png, gif), and the students type the

code to see the result; and (iii) combined coding: mix-

ing (i) and (ii). While coding, it is important that the

teacher explains the code in every viable way. Hence,

the teacher should bring smaller and simpler prob-

lems for the “example” session, whereas extensive

problems can be saved for the “exercise” session to

test students’ understanding.

In problem-solving (or “exercise”) sessions, the

teacher sets complex and extensive programming ex-

ercises that the students are required to solve in class.

They are encouraged to code the assigned exercises

by themselves so that they can gain a good foundation

in problem solving. All kinds of discussion, brain-

storming, analysis, and coding must be done in

groups, and the teacher provides adequate support

and guidance in person for solving the programming

problems. Thus, the TEE approach ensures that stu-

dents successfully practice the “learning by doing”

method, which is the absolute learning technique for

CP courses (Kawash et al., 2021). Furthermore, it can

also be a regular practice to recap the main point of

the previous lecture at the beginning of the class so

that the students receive the opportunity to clear their

conceptual misunderstandings, if any.

Thus, the TEE approach influences active engage-

ment and its components as proposed by Fredricks et

al. (2004)—behavioral, cognitive, and emotional/af-

fective. It ensures students’ involvement in active

learning by responding to the teacher’s directions in

activities (behavioral engagement), preference in

problem-solving activities and fault tolerance (cogni-

tive engagement), and commitment to belonging and

values in group activities (emotional engagement).

Since the FC method emphasizes students’ active en-

gagement in the learning process, it contributes well

to deep learning (Jensen et al., 2015; Steen-Utheim &

Foldnes, 2018).

To ensure active learning, the FC approach re-

quires proper activity design. Bybee et al. (2015) pro-

posed a 5E instructional model for improved active

learning (applied in Jensen et al. (2015)): engage, ex-

plore, explain, elaborate/extend, and evaluate. Hence,

in conjunction with in-class activities, assignments

and projects should be designed in the context of in-

quiry-based learning that incorporates role plays, sim-

ulations, brainstorming, and so on. To enrich their

software engineering understanding of system devel-

opment, students are encouraged to work with real-

time clients to build their projects on practical scenar-

ios. Student groups should be able to explain and

elaborate on their projects and divide them into real-

istic, meaningful, and achievable milestones. Thus,

they can make hands-on observations, solve interest-

ing and practical problems, and achieve explorable

models of practical projects in real life. Such an ac-

complishment makes them ready to plan and carry out

successful computer system development projects to-

gether with others in practical setups. Finally, various

initiatives can be taken to evaluate students’ learning,

both individually and in groups. For example, passing

group assignments/project can be set as a prerequisite

for the individual final examination. Thus, both their

deep learning (conceptual and analytical capabilities)

and their surface learning (memorizing capabilities)

can be effectively measured and correctly valued

(Photopoulos et al., 2021).

Altogether, the proposed blended teaching and

learning approach is expected to help students

sharpen their skills not only for developing dynamic

full-fledged software applications but also for plan-

ning and carrying out tasks from scratch (as projects)

with others. They can utilize their competencies in

project management, system development, and pro-

gramming to pave a smoother software engineering

journey. In this way, their professional qualifications

(i.e., knowledge construction) can be highlighted for

their future careers in practice (i.e., deep learning)

(Bachnak & Maldonado, 2014).

4 DISCUSSION

The FC concept expects students to cover literature

and short video lectures before coming to class and

applying their understanding to classroom activities

(El-Glaly, 2020; Lin, 2021). However, this technique

is not fully effective for CP courses because students

may struggle to understand complex programming

Blended Approach for Deep Learning: A Framework for Teaching Undergraduate Computer Programming Courses

397

concepts, business logic, and mathematical algo-

rithms. In my teaching, I experienced my students

struggling to understand a concept by watching the

short video lectures posted either by me (as their

teacher) or on other online platforms. The situation

was worse for weaker students, who often expect

teachers to go through complex logic and algorithms

in person in class, even when study materials are

made available before lectures. Since adequate and

in-time learning is the focal point in academia, edu-

cators cannot overlook the demands or desires of stu-

dents. This indicates doubling the time used for the

same tasks (Phillips & Trainor, 2014). The time both

parties already invested becomes useless—the

teacher must conduct the lecture once again, and so

the students attend it twice. We can avoid this incon-

venience by starting the class with traditional lectures

and then gradually incorporating the FC approach;

thus, the blended approach can easily address this

problem.

Conducting lectures (for theory) and laboratory

sessions (for practice coding) in separate slots is a

regular practice for teaching CP courses. Such a pair-

ing sometimes happens in back-to-back slots or

weekly slots (Marasco et al., 2017). Again, this is in-

effective (to some degree) since students get involved

in many other activities during the gap between the-

ory and laboratory sessions, and thus may forget some

parts of the learned concept they are expected to apply

in laboratory sessions. To address this issue, Bachnak

and Maldonado (2014) emphasized students’ inten-

sive involvement in their education and the applica-

tion of their learning. The TEE approach helps facili-

tate such extensive learning by conducting laboratory

sessions in parallel with lectures. However, practicing

this approach is not possible for a shorter class time;

instead, a four-hour-long weekly class can be con-

ducted with sufficient breaks in between. The success

ratio of this practice is demonstrated in the next sec-

tion, along with student feedback.

Making students code in class is another challenge

for teaching CP courses. Students’ expectations in

such courses vary to a large extent: One group of stu-

dents may have high expectations of coding in class,

while another group may prefer coding later or at

home. Better students may grab the concept easily

and quickly, whereas weaker students may struggle.

Thus, it becomes difficult for teachers to balance class

activities with a moderated workload, because better

students may easily get bored if the pace is too slow

and the weaker students may struggle to up if the pace

is too fast. Alternatively, students may feel insecure

about coding flexibility if the “coding together”

method is followed. Slow typing is time-consuming,

and erroneous code could demand the entire class

time to fix a bug that could go unsolvable. For exam-

ple, missing a simple semicolon (;) is enough to ruin

the productivity of the class. Thus, a class would gen-

erate a small outcome in which the expectation was

high. Therefore, to keep students interested and en-

gaged in classroom activities, the TEE approach en-

courages teachers to prepare exercises with extended

complexities. The brighter students can attempt to

solve these problems by utilizing their capabilities of

applying advanced logic.

However, Ouhbi and Pombo (2020) highlight that

enhancing students’ class participation is the greatest

challenge for teaching CP—they might not partici-

pate in class discussions, answer questions, take the

lead in group activities, and so on. Students rarely ask

questions to their teachers during class time or mostly

feel insecure about answering the questions asked

(Strayer, 2012). They foster a mindset of being teased

by fellow classmates if they answer incorrectly. How-

ever, there are always a couple of familiar faces who

answer questions or discuss raised issues. To ascer-

tain students’ understandings and guide their

knowledge construction, the proposed blended ap-

proach suggests that teachers speak to individual stu-

dents in person and monitor their activities on their

computer screens. Thus, they could step out of their

cocoons, although some students may find it incon-

venient due to their screen privacy.

Additionally, active engagement does not bring

about active participation all the time (Strayer, 2012).

Free riders are always there; they try to escape hurdles

but enjoy group grading. For example, some members

engaged in group activities (e.g., discussion, task

analysis, requirement elicitation, etc.) but did not par-

ticipate enough in coding for software system devel-

opment. Such piggybacking brings overhead to other

group members and thus, in most cases, produces

poor group performance. Hence, to make the pro-

posed blended approach functional toward in-depth

knowledge construction, forming effective groups is

one of the key requirements (Gren, 2020), and it

should not be done randomly (Barr et al., 2020). It is

important that teachers guide group members to en-

compass a good understanding not only of the work-

ing attitude and responsibilities but also of communi-

cation, information sharing, and leadership (Oliveira

& da Silva Borges, 2021). Therefore, students should

be independent to form their own groups and select

their group leaders by themselves. This will help them

become accustomed to co-learning in various con-

texts and complete the course project successfully. To

stop free-riders, groups must be restricted to a man-

ageable size (four to six students per group) (Barr et

CSEDU 2023 - 15th International Conference on Computer Supported Education

398

al., 2020; Gren, 2020). It is true that self-formulating

group establishment is rarely practiced in real-time

setups; however, we can use it in academia for better

student engagement in assigned tasks/projects and ac-

tive participation in group learning.

Effective teaching and learning require both

teachers and students to actively participate in the

learning process. Teachers are authority figures in

this pedagogy model who provide students with es-

sential study materials and supervise their learning

(Steen-Utheim & Foldnes, 2018). Thus, to meet the

curriculum objectives, the proposed blended ap-

proach clarifies the expectations, stipulates the objec-

tives, and assigns the required activities to students at

the beginning of each class. According to Brookfield

(2017), these are the requirements for generating ef-

fective teaching methods. In addition to the planned

classroom lectures, CP teaching pedagogy should in-

clude in-class problem solving, self-learning, relevant

classroom entertainment, question-and-answer ses-

sions, presentation and demonstration sessions, and

support for technical report writing. Besides orga-

nized instructions on physical and/or digital lectures,

the necessary guidance and supervision are required

to be provided to groups and individuals on case study

discussions, group work, assignments, and projects

(Kim et al., 2014). To strengthen understanding of the

topics covered, the blended teaching approach en-

courages students to use online video lectures upon

necessity. Since teaching and learning are connected,

this approach suggests a continuous assessment of

student learning during the semester.

5 FRAMEWORK EVALUATION

Following Bachnak and Maldonado’s (2014) recom-

mendations, student feedback on course structure and

conduction was used to evaluate the proposed frame-

work. A survey was designed using Google Forms

and sent to 70 students who completed an introduc-

tory web programming course in the 2021 fall semes-

ter at a Norwegian university. In the survey, the par-

ticipants were asked to answer two questions (“How

did you find the content for this course?” and “How

did you find the lecturing in this course?”), and to pro-

vide their reflections as free-text comments. Analyz-

ing these free-text comments can guide quality im-

provement initiatives, supported by deeper insights

from students’ experiences (Arditi et al., 2020). By

anonymously evaluating the course, 42 students eval-

uated the proposed framework for the blended teach-

ing and learning method. The analytical results are

presented below. To restrict students from responding

neutrally, a Likert scale of 6 was used in this survey.

A summary of the students’ written feedback

(free-text comments) is presented in Table 1. It

demonstrates not only the strengths and weaknesses

of the course and the teaching they emphasized, but

also their recommendations for future improvement

in the course.

Table 1: Students’ reactions to course content and teaching.

Most of the students who completed the survey

were happy with the course content and lecturing.

Although “no noticeable weakness” was mostly re-

ported, it can be identified that they expected more

examples and exercises in both formats (in-class and

homework), which is good. They preferred the “cod-

ing together” method rather than the implemented

“supervised coding” method. However, they were not

happy with the amount of content covered in the

class—they wanted less. Students looked for direct

answers to their questions without getting a heavy

background and not using technical words. Although

they reported good reviews for course conducting

style, lecturing, and interaction, they suggested fur-

ther development for teaching language and lecturing

slide content (some of them preferred Norwegian

speakers and more content in the slides). Lastly, stu-

dents expected more discussion on the course struc-

ture, assignments, evaluation, and conduction.

The feedback on the course content and organiza-

tion was positive. More than 80% of the students

found that the course topics improved their software

system development skills. They liked the lectures,

assignments, and literature because they could con-

nect the theory they learned in the course to real-

world web application development. Figure 2 demon-

strates the statistics.

Blended Approach for Deep Learning: A Framework for Teaching Undergraduate Computer Programming Courses

399

Figure 2: How much the students liked the course.

To understand and improve teaching quality, stu-

dents were also requested to provide their feedback

on lecturing. 74% of students found the implemented

TEE approach was helpful to them in following the

course content. Besides this online survey, they were

invited to have discussions on course structure, con-

tent, and conduction in person and to provide feed-

back accordingly. Instead of dividing the class be-

tween theory and laboratory sessions, the TEE prac-

tice was well accepted in the class. They appreciated

the immediate help they received from the teacher

when stuck somewhere in the code. Figure 3 demon-

strates the statistics.

Figure 3: How much the students liked the teaching.

Altogether, the students’ feedback helped me, as

the course teacher, identify the strengths and weak-

nesses of the course design and its conduction. By an-

alyzing their reflection data, we can easily identify the

concentration points for further development of the

course. Students sometimes suggest or recommend

their preferences and thus contribute to improving the

course and lecturing to achieve balanced teaching and

learning. Hence, such an evaluation of the overall

teaching framework—course content, assessment

forms, course organization, and teaching activities—

is always considered a resource for teachers of differ-

ent courses. It will assist us in improving our teaching

in the next semester and to be more prepared to mas-

ter the course in the case of a sudden shift between

offline and online modes of teaching.

6 CONCLUSIONS

This study presented and evaluated a framework for a

blended approach to teaching CP, such as in technical

courses. It discussed how this teaching method ena-

bles students to gain an adequate understanding of the

subject matter and apply it in practice. To provide

deep learning for proper knowledge construction, this

pedagogical technique merges traditional teaching

with the flipped classroom approach. It used the TEE

approach to perform this merging, where the theory

was addressed in traditional lectures to understand the

study foundation, and example and exercise parts

were used to ensure students’ active engagement in

their education as well as their active participation

and learning in the flipped classroom. This overall ap-

proach was found to be effective by the students who

participated in the course. Like any other research,

this study has some limitations. The proposed teach-

ing technique was applied to a specific first-semester

course, where basic programming was taught. Its ap-

plicability to other advanced programming courses

and its acceptance to other faculty members remains

unevaluated. For future work, I intend to investigate

students’ recommendations for their applicability in

further adjustment of the proposed framework and en-

hance it accordingly by incorporating a structured

process for course design and course evaluation, es-

pecially the examination system for computer pro-

gramming courses.

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