Programming teaching is not effective from experience. Research shows that the main problem novice programmers have is not understanding the syntax and semantics of programming language, but combining the knowledge they have learned to make a solution of a new problem. Patterns are useful to combine the knowledge and develop a solution for a problem. A lot of research suggests that using patterns in teaching introductory programming courses, but most of them just define the patterns and give some examples of them. However, just a few of them use programming patterns in a real course or make patterns into the teaching materials. This research proposes a programming pattern tutorial for elementary novice students and adopts the active research method to teach the material in a programming course of the first grade students of NSYSU. We collect and analyze the data coming from participating observation, interview record, and the test scripts of midterm and final term exams and hope to use action research method to categorize the difficulties we have encountered during the teaching process. In conclusion, the programming pattern material this research proposes can actually help students improve the ability of solving problems. In addition, they know how to start to start to solve a problem, have the algorithm idea in their mind and search solutions they have made to similar problems. Finally, write a solution to a new problem.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Texas at Austin, 2003. / Vita. Includes bibliographical references (p.137-141). Also available online,