Investigating Productive Failure in Computer Science

Steinhorst, Phil

Abstract

Productive Failure is an instructional setting where learners are confronted with a problem-solving task prior to recieving an introduction to canonical solution methods. This approach has its roots in secondary school mathematics education and has been studied widely in this field. To the best of our knowledge, however, little if anything is known about its feasibility and efficacy in computer science at a tertiary level. In my PhD project, I work towards reducing this gap by comparing the outcome of Productive Failure settings with those of Direct Instruction approaches where students are introduced to required methods first. Is it possible to design educational settings in computer science that elicit the positive effects of Productive Failure on students’ learning? By designing interventions that allow for collecting and analyzing of both qualitative and quantitative data, I hope to find answers to this question and its corrolaries.