An approach for problem specification and its application in an Introductory Programming Course

In the present paper we describe POP (problem oriented programming) - a teaching approach for introductory programming courses, aiming at developing students' skills in dealing with ill-defined problem specifications and programming. To evaluate this approach, a pilot case study was conducted during the second academic semester of 2008 in two classes of introductory programming lab of the computer science course at the Federal University of Campina Grande. The results of our case study have confirmed the effectiveness of this approach in terms of organization and completeness of problems' specifications. The innovative aspect of POP allows novices to deal with ill-defined problems, and to work out different activities of software engineering such as requirement elicitation, specification and tests. POP's main objective is to improve the traditional method of teaching introductory programming that concentrates mainly on codification.