Improving Learning Efficacy in Basic Programming Practice Based on Three-Stage Thinking
Abstract
Basic Programming Practice (BPP), as an introductory course for computer science majors, aims to enable students to have basic programming skills and lay a foundation for subsequent advanced course learning. This article draws on the concept of "using qi and cultivating both inside and outside" in traditional Chinese martial arts and highlights the importance of "thinking style" as an internal factor, developing a Three-stage Thinking (TT) methodology to foster students' learning efficacy in programming practice. In detail, TT consists of (1) orderly and logical thinking, (2) mathematical and computational thinking, as well as (3) linear and systematic thinking. Accordingly, we design specific and novel teaching methods to guide students to conduct the thinking practice following TT in programming. Extensive teaching experience has proved that the TT has effectively improved students' programming entry efficiency and design ability. Follow-up survey data tracking over half a decade shows that this method strongly supports students in programming learning. Thus, we highly recommend using TT methodology in BPP-related courses to unleash students' potential. I. Mengying Zhao School of Computer Science and Technology Shandong University Qingdao, China zhaomengying@email.sdu.edu.c n 201 Authorized licensed use limited to: CITY UNIV OF HONG KONG. Downloaded on September 17,2026 at 03:20:38 UTC from IEEE Xplore. Restrictions apply. improving their ability to solve complex engineering problems. According to the above methodology, we conducted extensive practice and tracking surveys during the last six years and testified to the effectiveness of the TT methodology for training students' programming thinking and skills. between n<10 and n=n+1, so they do not know that when n<10 is not true, n=n+1 still needs to be executed one more time. To further help students understand and master the two ways of thinking above, we asked students to design solutions to the n-th term of the Fibonacci sequence [10] and counted the methods used by the students. The results are shown in Table I. The results show that all students summarized the rules of the sequence and completed t