Research and Practice on the Teaching Mode of the Course Based on

the OBE Concept-Taking the C Programming Course as an Example

Meijiao Zhang and Youwei Xie

Quanzhou University of Information Engineering, Quanzhou, China

Keywords: OBE Concept, C Language, Teaching Mode, Course Objectives.

Abstract: C language programming is an important professional foundation course for computer science majors, and

the teaching content mainly includes the syntax of C language and programming algorithms and ideas.

Based on the OBE teaching concept, the objectives of the C language programming course are formulated

based on the requirements for the training of software engineering majors, and the teaching reform and

practice are carried out in terms of teaching contents, teaching methods and means, and course assessment

methods, which improve students' learning enthusiasm and practical ability, and also provide a reference

solution for the teaching reform of other programming courses.

1 INTRODUCTION

The Internet era no longer restricts access to

knowledge by time, space and geography, schools

are no longer the exclusive agents of knowledge and

the era of big data has brought with it vast and

abundant educational resources. Yet motivation and

attention to learning have become scarce resources.

In order to stimulate and mobilise students'

enthusiasm and motivation for independent learning,

and to change passive learning into active learning,

it is necessary to fully implement the student-centred

concept, to reform the traditional teacher-centred

teaching methods into mixed and diversified

teaching methods, and to change a single paper

examination into a comprehensive assessment. The

OBE output-oriented, student-centred and

continuous improvement education concept has

therefore been increasingly recognised by educators

and universities (Zhao Bingtao, 2019).

OBE (Outcome Based Education) is a model of

education in which student outcomes drive the

operation of the education system (Li Zhengya,

2022). OBE emphasises 'student-centredness' and

focuses on what outcomes are achieved by the

educated and how to effectively help students

achieve them. All teaching and learning-related

activities, including the curriculum, teaching and

learning methods, and assessment, should be

designed so that all students can successfully

achieve the desired learning outcomes at the end of

their learning.

Taking the study of the C programming course

by students of the Software Engineering major of the

School of Software of Quanzhou Information

Engineering College in Class 2021 as an example,

the course leader leads the course team to determine

the teaching objectives of the course that meet the

graduation requirements and facilitate assessment, to

formulate a teaching plan and syllabus that meet the

positioning of the school and can support the

achievement of the graduation requirements, to

review whether the teaching contents and the course

assessment methods can achieve the teaching

objectives and whether The course content and

assessment methods are reviewed to ensure that they

can achieve the teaching objectives and emphasise

the development of students' abilities, and to

determine the assessment cycle of the course.

Teachers implement the course according to the

syllabus and collect all data during the course. At the

end of the course, the course evaluation team

proposes improvement measures in response to the

problems identified during the teaching and

evaluation process, and forms a record document to

adjust the teaching plan and optimise the teaching

assessment and evaluation criteria (Wu L, 2022).

Zhang, M. and Xie, Y.

Research and Practice on the Teaching Mode of the Course Based on the OBE Concept-Taking the C Programming Course as an Example.

DOI: 10.5220/0012287100003807

Paper published under CC license (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0)

In Proceedings of the 2nd International Seminar on Artiﬁcial Intelligence, Networking and Information Technology (ANIT 2023), pages 531-537

ISBN: 978-989-758-677-4

531

2 DEVELOPMENT OF THE

OBJECTIVES OF THE C

PROGRAMMING COURSE

UNDER THE OBE EDUCATION

MODEL

The graduation requirements for students are set in

the professional training programmes of universities,

which generally involve professional and

engineering skills, interpersonal skills, teamwork

and communication skills, professional abilities and

attitudes, and complex engineering skills. These

graduation requirements are supported by the

curriculum system, which forms a matrix to support

the graduation requirements of the talent training

programme. The course objectives are designed to

reflect students' learning outcomes, to be clearly

aligned with the graduation requirements, and to

guide the teaching and assessment of the course

(Xiaofei Sun, Xiong L). The C Programming course

in our software engineering program is supported by

Graduation Requirement 1 Engineering Knowledge,

Graduation Requirement 3 Designing/Developing

Solutions and Graduation Requirement 5 Using

Modern Tools. In response to these requirements

and the characteristics of C programming, the course

team members, after much discussion, finally

identified three course objectives for the C

Programming course. Objective 1: To gain

proficiency in the basic syntax knowledge of the C

language. This includes basic language knowledge

of programs and programming languages,

algorithms and algorithm descriptions, standard data

types and expressions, common library functions,

statements, constructed data types (arrays, pointers,

structures, commons, enumerations, etc.), etc.;

Objective 2: To be able to develop good

programming habits and styles, to form certain self-

learning and debugging error abilities, problem

analysis skills, code reading skills, and teamwork

skills. Be able to write C programs and design

experimental solutions based on practical problems;

Objective 3: Be familiar with the running process of

C programs, be able to proficiently configure the C

program development environment and use

programming tools, and be able to consult relevant

standards and manuals.

Combined with the course objectives of C

programming and the corresponding graduation

requirement index points for software engineering

majors, the course team has determined the

correspondence between the two after several

studies and discussions, as shown in Table 1.

Table 1: Table of course objectives and supporting

relationships to graduation requirements.

Graduation

requiremen

Graduation

Requirements

Indicator Points

Support

strength

Course Objectives

Engineerin

knowledge

Indicator Point 1-3:

Be able to apply

software engineering

expertise and tools to

reasonably simplify,

reason and analyse

complex software

engineering problems,

build mathematical

models and solve

them.

Objective 1: Basic

knowledge of the syntax of

C, including basic

language knowledge of

programs and

programming languages,

algorithms and algorithm

descriptions, standard data

types and expressions,

common library functions,

statements, constructed

data types (arrays,

pointers, structures,

commons, enumerations,

etc.), etc.

Design/dev

elop

solutions

Indicator Point 3-3:

Be able to design,

develop, manage and

maintain complex

software projects and

demonstrate a sense

of innovation.

Objective 2: Be able to

develop good

programming habits and

style, develop some ability

to learn and debug errors

on their own, problem

analysis, code reading, and

teamwork. Be able to write

C programs and design

experimental solutions

based on practical

problems.

5 Use of

modern

tools

Target 5-1:

Understand the

principles and

methods of using

software

development, testing

and debugging

support platforms and

IT tools commonly

used in software

engineering-related

fields, and be able to

understand the

limitations of modern

tools in solving

practical problems.

Objective 3: To master the

basic ideas and methods of

structured programming,

to be familiar with the

running process of C

programs, to be able to

configure the C program

development environment

and use programming

tools proficiently, and to

consult relevant standards

and manuals.

3 TEACHING

IMPLEMENTATION OF C

PROGRAMMING COURSE

In line with the principles of student-centred

education, the course should be organised and

implemented in such a way that it is focused on

student learning outcomes, student development and

student learning (Niu H, 2022). The C Programming

course team has carried out a detailed design of the

teaching content, teaching methods, course

assessment and evaluation methods, as follows.

ANIT 2023 - The International Seminar on Artiﬁcial Intelligence, Networking and Information Technology

532

3.1 Teaching Content, Allocation of

Credit Hours, and Support of the

Course Objectives by Teaching

Content

In order to better achieve the course objectives, the

course team has carefully selected knowledgeable

and interesting programming cases as classroom

teaching cases, and set up a set of topics from easy

to difficult for each chapter; carefully designed

student experiments to effectively improve students'

programming skills, logical thinking ability and

innovative thinking. The teaching content and

allocation of teaching hours and the corresponding

course objectives are designed as follows: the course

is divided into nine teaching units, namely C

language overview, C programming fundamentals,

selection structure programming, circular structure

programming, arrays, functions, pointers, structures

and other data types, and files. Course Objective 1 is

supported by Teaching Units 2, 3, 4 and 5; Course

Objective 2 is supported by Teaching Units 3, 4, 5,

6, 7 and 8; Course Objective 3 is supported by

Teaching Units 1 and 9. The allocation of credit

hours to each teaching unit and the relationship to

the support of the course objectives are shown in

Table 2.

Table 2: Table of teaching content, allocation of hours,

and the relationship of teaching content to support the

course objectives.

Teaching content

Support

for

teaching

objectives

Classroom teaching

Online

self-

directed

learning

Credit

hours

Lectures

Experiment

Teaching Unit 1

Overview of the C

language

Teaching Unit 2

Fundamentals of C

Programming

Teaching unit 3 Choice

structure programming

1, 2

Teaching Unit 4 Loop

Structure Programming

1, 2

Teaching Unit 5 Arrays

1, 2

Teaching Unit 6

Functions

Teaching Unit 7 Pointer

Teaching Unit 8

Structures and other data

types

Teaching Unit 9

Documentation

Integrated projects

Total hours

3.2 Reform of Teaching Methods and

Tools Based on OBE

Based on the OBE student-centred and result-

oriented concept, the course team has reformed the

teaching method around the course objectives,

changing from the traditional teaching mode to a

flipped classroom + online and offline hybrid

teaching mode, in which the online teaching

resources are the provincial-level high-quality online

open courses built by the course team on the Super

Star platform, and the experimental platform chosen

is the PTA programming class experimental

teaching aid platform. PTA is a series of national

programming courses teaching team of Zhejiang

University, in cooperation with Netease and

Hangzhou Baiteng Education Technology Co., Ltd,

launched in September 2015 for universities and

society, automatic assessment of the program, open

teaching aid platform, committed to building a

quality teaching resources for schools and

enterprises to build and share the platform (Lian

Xinze, 2022). At present, there are 991 universities,

8319 teachers, more than 250,000 high-quality

questions and more than 3.6 million students

registered. Teachers can choose questions already in

the question bank or create their own test questions

for students to practice. The system not only allows

students to evaluate the correctness of the program

immediately after programming, but also allows

them to check their ranking in the class, and if they

are able to do so, they can also do the fixed set of

questions in the system, in which they can see their

ranking among the national university students. The

course has been designed separately for before,

during and after class, as shown in Figure 1.

Figure 1: Flipped classroom + online/offline hybrid

teaching design.

1) Before Class

The teacher uses Study Link to assign learning

tasks and pre-class reflection questions so that

students can clarify their learning objectives and

Research and Practice on the Teaching Mode of the Course Based on the OBE Concept-Taking the C Programming Course as an Example

533

content for the next class. Students complete the

learning tasks set by the teacher, which include

learning the textbook, online courseware and videos,

and completing online quizzes. Students can leave

messages to the teacher via StudyPass or QQ when

they encounter difficulties in the learning process.

Teachers can use the test results to grasp students'

pre-class learning in order to determine and adjust

the content of classroom lectures. 16 lessons in total.

2) In-Class

There are two types of offline delivery:

classroom and laboratory, both of which are

described below.

Classroom teaching, divided into two types, 16

sessions in total, 32 hours

① Lecture + small flip

Based on students' learning and questions

collected from the web platform before class,

teachers deepen their understanding of students'

knowledge through quick questions and answers,

explain key points and difficulties with examples,

and summarise (Honglei M, 2022). In class,

interesting and knowledgeable programming

problems are assigned for students to discuss in

small groups and write algorithms. 2-3 groups of

students are invited to present their programs or

algorithms at a time, and the teacher comments on

them appropriately or students evaluate each other.

② The Great Classroom Turnaround: My

Classroom, My Talk

The instructor of this course will assign

integrated design projects in the middle of the term

through Study Pass, and students will work in

groups to collaborate, discuss and work together to

complete them outside of class time. In the last two

sections of the course, a representative from each

group will present their program on stage and run a

demonstration, which will be critiqued by the

teacher. All students other than the group

representative will present on stage on a sample

basis, and each group will submit a project design

report at the end (Zhu Y, 2022).

Experiments - a combination of practice and

lectures, online and offline, 16 sessions in total, 32

hours

Two segments are included:

① On-board practicals, students log on to the

PTA platform to complete the practice problems

assigned by the teacher.

② Flip the experiment and the teacher will

observe students completing the exercises. 15-20

minutes are left at the end of the experiment for

students to assess and comment on each other's

mistakes.

3) After School

Students brush up on their practice on PTA and

teachers post on QQ about students' completion of

exercises and answer questions with low correctness.

Teachers post some extended knowledge of the

course through blogs to improve students'

information literacy.

Through the reform of teaching methods,

students' interest in learning and programming

ability have improved significantly. Students are

often seen working overtime to brush up their skills,

because they can see the results of other students,

they will silently compete with each other, so they

show a state of catching up with each other. Most of

the students are active in class, their programming

skills have improved significantly, many of them ask

the teacher to assign harder topics, and the failure

rate at the end of the term has dropped significantly.

In addition, our school is an application-oriented

university, which focuses on cultivating students'

practical application ability. In order to meet the

training objectives of our university, we have

organized teachers who teach C language

programming to compile a textbook, which has been

published by Tsinghua University Press in 2018 and

has been used in teaching. The textbook emphasizes

the combination of theory and practice. A large

number of examples to solve practical problems are

compiled in the textbook, and a matching exercise

solution and computer experiment course is also

written. Corresponding to our self-compiled

teaching materials, we organized teachers to make

multimedia courseware with the teaching materials.

In the usual teaching activities, we organize teachers

to carry out teaching research activities in view of

the problems in teaching, such as: Pointers that

students find difficult to learn and other chapters,

and study how to break through the difficulties.

Through self-compiled textbooks, multimedia

courseware and teaching and research activities, the

level of all teachers has been improved.

3.3 Method of Assessment and

Weighting of Courses

In order to better fulfil the course objectives, this

course designs the assessment content separately

according to each course objective. The course

adopts a combination of online and offline, phased,

multiple cumulative and marathon learning

assessment and evaluation mode, in which students'

academic status and other assessments are conducted

before or during the teaching process, and a

summative assessment test is conducted centrally at

ANIT 2023 - The International Seminar on Artiﬁcial Intelligence, Networking and Information Technology

534

the end of the period, in order to keep abreast of

students' existing knowledge level and the progress

and problems they have made during the teaching

process, so as to timely adjust and improve the

teaching programme and promote students'

development. The mid-term and final examinations

of the course will be conducted using an online

testing platform instead of paper-based papers to

improve the fairness and objectivity of the

examinations. The course objective assessment

consists of online learning situation, midterm exam,

final exam, experiment and comprehensive project

grades, with the following weighting: 0.2 weighting

for objective 1 online learning situation, 0.3

weighting for midterm exam (10 points for question

1 and 20 points for question 2), 0.5 weighting for

final exam (10 points for question 1 and 20 points

for question 2); 0.2 weighting for objective 2

experiment (including experiment 6-8), 0.2

weighting for midterm exam (25 points for question

25 marks for Question 3, 45 marks for Question 4)

weighted 0.3, final exam (20 marks for Question 3,

20 marks for Question 4, 30 marks for Question 5)

weighted 0.5; Objective 3 experiments (containing

experiments 1-5) weighted 0.5, integrated project

design weighted 0.5, as shown in Table 3 below.

Table 3: Table of assessment methods and weightings for

each course objective in C programming.

Course Objectives

Assessment methods

Weighting

Basis of evaluation

Course Objective

Online Learning

0.2

Online learning

Mid-term exams

0.3

Questions 1-2

Final exams

0.5

Questions 1-2

Course Objective

Experiment

0.2

Experiments 6-8

Mid-term exams

0.3

Questions 3 and 4

Final exams

0.5

Questions 3-5

Course Objective

Experiment

0.5

Experiments 1-5

Integrated projects

0.5

Integrated project

completion

3.4 Evaluation of the Achievement of

the Objectives of the C

Programming Course

The course objectives are mainly evaluated

quantitatively, and the data source is the assessment

of each assessment link in the course syllabus that

supports the course objectives. If the course

objective i is supported by N assessment methods,

assuming that the total score of the jth assessment

method is Sj, the average grade of students'

assessment is Aj, and the weight is Wj, the

assessment value OAi of the achievement of course

objective i can be calculated as shown in equation

(1):

OA W





(1)

The sum of the weights of all the assessment

points in equation 1 that support the achievement of

course objective i is 1 (Zhifeng Yang, 2022).

A total of 117 students of C language

programming in the class of 2021 were assessed, and

the lowest achievement rating value of the three

objectives was 0.73 and the highest rating value was

0.78, so the achievement rating value of C language

programming course objectives was 0.73. The

assessment results of students were divided into five

levels, and the distribution of students for each

achievement degree of each course objective is

shown in Figure 2.

Figure 2: Distribution of students' achievement of C

programming course objectives.

The graph above shows that the distribution of

students' overall performance is largely normal, with

all four course objectives being achieved in the class

as a whole, as assessed by an expectation of 0.70,

but a total of 22 individual students did not meet the

standard. Of these, Objective 1 and Objective 3 were

completed satisfactorily, with over 85% of students

having an expectation value greater than 0.7, and

Objective 2 was completed at an average level of

82% achievement. From the C programming course

objectives and corresponding teaching content,

students have a good grasp of the basic knowledge

of this course, but the comprehensive application

ability is insufficient, and most students are unable

to use functions, pointers and structures flexibly for

programming.

Research and Practice on the Teaching Mode of the Course Based on the OBE Concept-Taking the C Programming Course as an Example

535

3.5 Continuous Improvement of C

Programming Course Teaching

The attainment rating for Course Objective 1 was

0.76 and the distribution of students' scores was

largely concentrated between 60 and 90, relatively

scattered, with two students in particular scoring low

and away from the concentration zone (Luo J, Wu

Xiusheng). The improvement measures are that

special attention needs to be paid to individual

students with poorer knowledge and ability, and

individual tutoring can be provided when necessary

to slowly improve students' knowledge and

application skills according to their needs. At the

same time, the average of all students in Objective 1

is not high and there is still room for improvement.

In subsequent teaching, the main focus needs to be

on improving the overall students' basic knowledge

level and ability. The attainment rating for course

objective 2 was 0.73, and the distribution of

students' scores was basically concentrated between

60 and 90, which was relatively scattered and

distributed over a wide range, with four students

scoring low and far from the concentration area. In

the subsequent teaching, attention was paid to the

learning of the lower-achieving students and

teaching was tailored to their needs. Also the

average score for students in Objective 2 was not

high, with many students being more inflexible in

algorithm design and lacking in programming

knowledge and programming skill levels. The class

attainment rating for Course Objective 3 was 0.78,

with three students scoring relatively low and with a

low overall score. Students' ability to synthesise and

apply their knowledge is inadequate and their

patience and motivation need further strengthening.

According to the assessment, the marks of the

experimental design and final assessment show that

there are still some students who fail to follow the

teacher's teaching progress in time and need to

adjust their teaching methods and progress (Li

Zonghua, Limin T). In the future, there are a number

of suggestions for continuous improvement in the

teaching process:

① Focus more on the development of students'

comprehensive application skills, pay attention to

the learning of lower-achieving students, and tailor

the teaching to their needs.

② Continue to strengthen the development of

students' practical skills, comprehensive design and

creative abilities.

4 CONCLUSION

As China's information technology continues to

deepen, the country needs more high-quality

software engineering professionals. c programming

language, as the first programming language in our

school, is an important professional foundation

course, and also a course with strong practicality and

application. The reform and implementation of

OBE-based C programming is not only an

innovation of the traditional teaching mode, but also

a significant and long-term work . The course is

based on the "student-centred" principle, which

emphasises both theoretical teaching and practical

skills training. In the process of implementing the

curriculum, it is necessary to set teaching objectives,

strengthen the content of the curriculum, build

teaching resources, reform teaching methods and

means, and set reasonable assessment methods, etc.

Although these issues increase teachers' knowledge

and teaching workload, the curriculum reform

allows students to effectively learn new knowledge,

master new methods, develop new skills and solve

new problems, and become the biggest beneficiaries

of the curriculum reform. These are also the goals

that we as educators seek to achieve. Teaching is an

endless road, and we will continue to explore it.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

This work was financially supported by Fujian

Province Young and Middle-aged Teachers

Educational Research Project "Research on Network

Intrusion Detection Technology Based on Deep

Learning"N0.JAT220456.

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