Treffer: IMPROVING STUDENTS' FOCUS IN INTRODUCTORY PROGRAMMING COURSES.

Introductory programming courses struggle with low passing rates and low quality of knowledge that students possess even at the very end of their introductory programming courses. Abstract nature of programming makes students unmotivated and skeptic towards programming. Very soon after the first lectures students start to be confused and unable to follow the rest of the lectures which makes them unwilling to deal with their homework assignments. In order to try to resolve this problem and to increase students' focus in introductory programming courses a more dynamic approach is proposed which includes the usage of PTG (Programming Tasks Generator). PTG is designed to dynamically generate appropriate tasks for every particular student. In this way lectures become less predictable and students are encouraged to stay focused and also to do their tasks on their own. In this paper the results of using PTG are presented and elaborated. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]