Extracurricular Student-Centered Projects to Learn Computer Programming

Out-of-class learning environments, such as student clubs, workshops, camps, etc., provide students unique opportunities to grow their potential interests, enrich their knowledge and strengthen their self-efficacy. It is demonstrated in STEM fields that out-of-class interdisciplinary activities allow students to build relationships of multiple subjects, blend them properly and apply them to solve practical problems. Encouraged by the outcomes of out-of-class activities and the growing interest of computer programming at our university, two extracurricular projects on developing a graphical user interface (GUI) for double girders and writing a script to batch-process images were conducted recently in a student club. The projects were assigned to the students to enhance their learning interests, improve their computer programming abilities, and build their confidence in software development. The extracurricular projects were designed by considering students’ curriculum courses of interest and previous co-op training experience. The students dug into various computer programming skills and implemented them appropriately to address the project requirements. They were also challenged to consider both fundamental programming techniques as well as software system structure. It was observed that the extracurricular projects had triggered the students’ learning curiosities, increased their programming proficiency, and deepened their understanding of the computer programming field. The feedback from the students suggests that the project experience was more than satisfactory and contributed to their future career preparations.