A “light” application of Blended Extreme Apprenticeship in teaching Programming to Students of Mathematics

In this paper we analyze an application of eXtreme Apprenticeship (XA) methodology, in a blended form with a reduced set of software and human resources. The study was conducted at University of Verona, in the context of the course “Programming with Laboratory” with 170 participants enrolled at the first degree in Applied Mathematics, throughout three different academic years. We analyze the very first period of lessons, when the fundamentals of programming are introduced. During the first two years, students were trained with a traditional teaching method; the lasts group was trained using the XA teaching model. Results showed a real improvement of learning outcomes in students trained with XA compared with the traditional teaching method. Possible refinements of XA method in our case study and in other educational contexts are discussed.