Coding Dojo as a transforming practice in collaborative learning of programming: an experience report

Learning computer programming is a challenging task as evidenced by high failure and dropout rates. Our work aims to overcome some difficulties of Software Engineering undergraduate students by collaborative learning practices of computer programming. In this paper we report the experience of a project executed at Federal University of Pampa to improve the practice in programming using Coding Dojos as a learning strategy. The project lasted two years and had fourteen meetings. Every meeting had three distinct moments: problem choosing, coding, and retrospective. We analyzed project results according to two perspectives. By Dojo Master perspective, we collected and summarized their perceptions by classifying what did it work and what did not work. In participants' perspective, we applied a survey to collect attitudes, which were examined through statistics and content analysis. Intersection of results point to the following positive general findings: collaborative and joyful environment favors learning, adoption of new programming practices fosters participation, and participants feel more engaged in problem solving. On the other hand, results indicate some issues that shall be addressed: exposure of programming in front of classmates is a barrier, and subsequent Coding Dojos over the same programming language.