Design and Experimentation of Activities for CS1: A Competences Oriented Approach (unpacking the Informed Design Teaching and Learning Matrix)

In Introductory Computer Science courses, especially Computer Science 1 (CS1), dropout rates are generally high and results are often disappointing. In order to motivate and engage students to achieve better results in CS1, our teaching strategy is based on designing several activities using a competences oriented approach. This paper describes the use of a framework proposed by Crismond and Adams in order to create pedagogical activities for the CS1 course at Universidad ORT Uruguay. We propose to extend that framework with competences oriented activities. We present a detailed description of each activity. Our thesis is that including this kind of activities helps to obtain better results. Experimentation was done in 2012 and 2013. Teachers of the experimental group referred a high level of motivation of the students. Results show that the inclusion of those activities seems to be helpful for students and the proposed pedagogical design appears to produce better final results.