A Mini-Ethnography Study of Teaching C Programming to First Year Non-Circuit Branch Students

Problem based learning, finding its root from the medical practices is now a widely used approach in several other domains. The method has also been used in computing and explored and researched with the programming courses as well. This work proposes one such model for first year c programming. A variant of the model was adapted to first design problem scenarios to teach the concept philosophy and then explain the underlying concept with c realization and its syntax. The students coming from non-circuit branches and having lower intrinsic motivation to study the course have shown gradual interest and motivation towards the much-needed 21st century skill. On finding that they lacked the debugging skills, even the syntax was explained with design philosophy and problem based learning. Understanding the class behavior being the research question, the work was analyzed using the mini-ethnography qualitative study. The study was carried out for a month span with seven sessions. The data was collected using observations and forms, and also thematic coding was carried out for the data analysis. The discussion section presents the analysis of the model proving the method to be an effective methodology for teaching and learning. Even the feedback collected for the model is positive and can be employed to teach other courses as well. Keywords—Mini-Ethnography; Problem Based Learning; Programming; Problem Solving