An Online Learning Help Approach based on Q&A sites in Programming Course

In college courses, computer programming has always been a quite difficult course, especially for novices. Most students often encounter various difficulties when learning programming. How to help them in time has always been the research focus of scholars. Providing timely learning help plays a crucial role in improving students’ interest in learning and reducing the dropout rate, especially in the context of online learning and blended learning. Many researchers have conducted research and practice on how to provide help for learners. This paper presents an online learning help approach, which focuses on peer help. It consists of two aspects: the Question Recipe and the Participation Award. The Question Recipe is a kind of question specification which help students ask questions in a concise and precise way. The Participation Award is a kind of incentive mechanism which encourages novices to ask questions whenever stuck and skilled ones to try to answer questions. The approach has been implemented on Stack Overflow. Students’ site behavior data and evaluation questionnaires were collected and analyzed. The statistical results show that our approach provided students timely and sufficient support in their learning process and improved students’ academic performance. Most students were satisfied with our approach.