Frontiers in Computing and Intelligent Systems 
ISSN: 2832-6024 | Vol. 1, No. 2, 2022 

 

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Research on Project-Based Learning Python 
Programming Course 

Fengru Ling *, Shu Gong 

School of Computer Science, Guangdong University of Science & Technology, Dongguan, China. 

* Corresponding author: Fengru Ling. 

 

Abstract: In order to improve the teaching quality of Python programming course, this paper adopts the teaching model based 

on Project-Based Learning to design and decompose Student Information Management System, and reforms the teaching method, 

classroom teaching feedback and assessment methods in combination with the actual situation of the college. The practice results 

show that the teaching model based on Project-Based Learning can stimulate students' interest in learning, mobilize their 

initiative in learning, improve their engineering practice ability and programming ability, and achieve good teaching results. 

Keywords: Python programming; Teaching reform; Project-Based Learning; Process assessment; Classroom teaching 

feedback. 

 

1. Introduction 

Python is a programming language that has been developed 

for more than 30 years, and it is also a universal programming 

language that is closest to natural language at present. In 2016, 

the College Computer Course Teaching Steering Committee 

of the Ministry of Education issued the Basic Requirements 

for College Computer Basic Course Teaching, proposing to 

use Python as the teaching language of the first programming 

course, and add it as one of the subjects of Computer Level II 

Examination. With its help, domestic colleges and 

universities gradually set up Python programming course, 

which has also become a hot spot in teaching reform. 

A project is a planned work with a fixed start time and end 

time. In the field of education, the project refers to a series of 

learning activities conducted by students around the selected 

topic, such as investigation, observation, research, expression 

of new knowledge, display and sharing. In education research, 

such learning activities are called Project-Based Learning 

(hereinafter referred to as PBL). PBL is an educational 

method and principle based on the theories of situational 

cognition, social constructivism and pragmatism. PBL 

advocates "student-centered approach". Its basic feature is to 

teach in the form of projects, with projects as the main line, 

teachers as the leading, and students as the main body. All 

teaching activities of the PBL teaching model are carried out 

around real projects. When students complete the prescribed 

projects, teachers also complete the corresponding teaching 

content. In recent years, a large number of teaching researches 

around this theory have emerged, which has confirmed the 

feasibility and effectiveness of applying this theory to the 

teaching of programming courses from multiple dimensions. 

2. Analysis of the Current Situation of 
Python Programming Course 

Python language basic syntax; (2) Process control; (3) 

String; (4) List, tuple, dictionary and other combined data 

types; (5) Function; (6) Object oriented; (7) Exception; (8) 

File operation; (9) Modules and common libraries. At present, 

the teaching method is still based on "teaching by teachers 

and imitation by students". Students rely on the knowledge 

taught by teachers and can only complete simple small 

programs. They are still helpless for more complex practical 

problems and cannot propose effective and innovative 

solutions. 

The existing teaching design is mainly taught in the order 

of the chapters of the textbook, and at the same time, it is 

demonstrated with the corresponding code applet. The 

students' computer experiments are mainly to verify the 

classic cases. Experiments are incoherent and out of touch 

with real projects at work.Therefore, students' ability to apply 

knowledge points is relatively poor, and they will only write 

similar small programs, but will not use the knowledge points 

to program to solve practical problems. The same problem 

exists in Java programming and C programming courses. In 

the long run, students will have a sense of frustration and fear, 

which will affect their enthusiasm for follow-up learning. 

The course assessment takes the final exam paper grades as 

the main assessment and evaluation index. Taking the college 

where the author works as an example, the final exam score 

accounts for 60% of the total score. Since the difficulty of 

programming questions is limited by the length and duration 

of the final exam papers, they are often just some classic 

algorithm questions. Many students memorize some 

questions in advance in order to cope with the exam, but they 

cannot flexibly apply these algorithms to real scenarios. This 

imperfect evaluation mechanism is not conducive to 

cultivating students' programming ability and computational 

thinking. 

3. Teaching Model of Project-Based 
Learning 

3.1. Project Design 

Project selection plays a crucial role in the effect of 

curriculum reform. The projects selected by teachers should 

not only cover most of the knowledge in the course, but also 

have certain practical application value. At the same time, the 

difficulty level of the project should be moderate. After 

selecting a project, the teacher must first let the students 

master the basic knowledge points through a certain 

theoretical explanation, and then let the students work in 

groups as a unit, divide roles according to different divisions 



 

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of labor, clarify the learning tasks of each role, and guide 

students to carry out project practice activities. Let student’s 

complete requirement analysis, software design, coding 

implementation, software testing and other links according to 

the software life cycle, and show the learning results of the 

course through group defense.  

The project selected in this paper is Student Information 

Management System, which is not only closely related to 

students' learning situations, but also covers most of the 

knowledge points of this course. The course is taught 

according to the process of project development, including 

project requirement analysis, system design, system 

development environment, project directory structure, main 

function design, student information maintenance module 

design, query/statistics module design, sorting module design 

and project packaging. Each stage of project development is 

integrated into the explanation of the corresponding Python 

knowledge points, as shown in Table 1. 

Table 1. Project Schedule 

Project module Main task description Knowledge points Completion time 

I 

Requirement analysis: a company needs 

to develop a simple student information 

management system. After receiving the 

task, the project manager first needs to 

communicate with the project stakeholders 

to conduct requirement analysis. 

- Week 1 

II 

System design: according to 

requirement analysis, the main functions 

that the system should have are obtained; 

sort out the system business process; 

design the main interface and each 

functional module interface of the system. 

- Week 2 

III 

System development environment and 

project directory structure: prepare the 

system development environment and the 

organizational structure of project folder 

according to the key technologies used in 

the project 

Installation and use of Python 

development environment: 

Operating system: Win7 or 

above; Python interpreter: 

Python 3.7 or above; 

Development tool: PyCharm; 

Python built-in module: os 

Organization of project 

documents: first-level file: 

project folder; secondary files: 

Python files (to achieve specific 

functions), files (to save student 

information) automatically 

created by the system 

Week 3 

IV 

Main function design: write the main 

function to display the main interface 

functions of the system 

Variables and Data types; 

Input and output; Process 

control; Call of function 

Week 4~5 

V 

Design of student information 

maintenance module: input, delete, modify 

student information. 

Variable 

List, Dictionary, String; 

Process control; Definition of 

function; object-oriented; File 

Operation; Exception 

Week 6~10 

VI 

Query/statistics module design: find 

students information by students' 

name/ID; query and display all students' 

information; count the total number of 

students 

as above Week 11 

VII 

Sorting module design: display students' 

information in ascending or descending 

order according to the grades of each 

subject or all subjects 

as above Week 12 

VIII 
Project Packaging: Package the 

program as an executable file (*.exe) 

Installation and use of 

modules; Program packaging 
Week 13 

It can be seen from Table 1 that the knowledge points 

involved in the development of each functional module of 

Student Information Management System are repeated, and 

Module IV and Module V basically cover most of the 

knowledge points of this course. If all the knowledge points 

are explained directly in one module at one time, it is too 

comprehensive and difficult for students to digest. Therefore, 

the knowledge points can be explained in Module IV and V 

step by step. Since the knowledge points involved in Module 

VI to Module VII are the same as those in Module V, they can 

be used as an expansion exercise task for students. In order to 

make the project in the teaching process cover the knowledge 



 

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points that need to be taught in the course, teachers need to 

guide students to try to use various methods to complete the 

project tasks, which is conducive to mastering relevant 

knowledge. 

3.2. Project Implementation 

Python programming course has 4 class hours per week, 

totaling 52 class hours, including 26 theoretical hours and 26 

experimental hours. Before the second class, students should 

complete the task in groups of 3-5 people, and choose the 

group leader, and then sit again in groups. The teacher shows 

Student Information Management System project schedule to 

the whole class, as shown in Table 1. The teacher uses the 

method of "top-down and gradual refinement" to explain the 

project, and students use the method of "bottom-up and 

gradual improvement" to complete the modules in the project, 

and establish a complete concept from actual problems to 

computer program development. The specific teaching is 

carried out in the following order: first of all, the teacher 

describes the actual problem to be solved, introduces the 

background, specific content and requirements of the project, 

and organizes students to think independently and discuss the 

solutions to the problem; secondly, the teacher conducts in-

depth analysis and interpretation of the project, decomposes 

the project task level by level, and finally divides it into 

several sub modules with relatively independent functions 

and low implementation difficulty, analyzes the business 

process of each sub module, and guides students to compare 

with the previous solution; once again, the teacher analyzes 

the knowledge points corresponding to each sub-module to 

help students build problem-solving knowledge maps; finally, 

it is the whole process of coding, debugging and running of 

the project. Then, all functional modules are combined, run, 

debugged, tested, optimized and improved to achieve 

problem solving. 

3.3. Classroom Teaching Feedback 

In the process of teaching reform, good classroom teaching 

feedback plays a role in promoting students' active learning 

and improving learning efficiency. Therefore, it is necessary 

to collect feedback from students in a timely manner and 

multiple times, so as to know the students' real thoughts and 

mastery of the classroom content at the first time, and adjust 

quickly. Better feedback method: Before each get out of class, 

please take 3 minutes to fill in the three questions. The three 

questions are arranged in order from easy to difficult, from 

more to less. These three questions can be designed according 

to what feedback the teacher wants to get. For example, if 

teachers want to know whether students like the current 

teaching method, they can ask three questions like this: (1) 

Describe your state in this class in three words; (2) Say two 

things that you enjoyed the most in this class; (3) Say one 

thing you would like the classroom to improve or something 

you would like the teacher to do more or less in the future. 

These questions can help teachers understand students' true 

feelings about this lesson from the superficial to the deep, 

from the surface to the inside. After collecting students' 

feedback, it is necessary to analyze and respond. The teacher's 

response style is best matched with the student's feedback 

style. 

3.4. Course Assessment and Evaluation 

The ultimate goal of teaching reform is to improve the 

teaching quality, so that students can better master 

professional knowledge and practical skills. In the process of 

implementing teaching reform, the method of combining 

learning process assessment and goal assessment is adopted, 

focusing on the diversity of evaluation. The main content and 

weight of the assessment plan are shown in Table 2. 

Table 2. Weights and Standards of Course Assessment 

Assessment 

time 

Assessment 

method 
Weight/% Assessment criteria 

All term 

Attendance 10% 
Score according to the check-in situation of each class exported by Chaoxing 

Xuexi Tong 

Task 20% 
Average score of verification type and design type task derived from Chaoxing 

Xuexi Tong 

Project 

acceptance 
15% 

In the process of teaching reform, the teacher will assess students' 

comprehensive performance to form the project acceptance evaluation results 

Midterm 
Class progress 

test 
20% 

Scores of the mid-term theoretical objective test derived from Chaoxing Xuexi 

Tong 

End of 

term 

Project defense 15% 

After the completion of the project, multiple teachers will form an evaluation 

team to comprehensively evaluate students’ project completion from the aspects 

of code standardization, basic functions of the project, innovation and difficulty, 

document content, document standardization, and students' answers to questions, 

and give opinions and form project defense scores 

Final 

examination 
20% Score of the final theoretical objective test derived from Chaoxing Xuexi Tong 

4. Conclusions 

Adopting PBL teaching mode can enhance students' 

enthusiasm for learning, maximize students' subjective 

initiative, cultivate teamwork ability, and improve students' 

ability to analyze and solve practical problems. In view of this, 

it is expected to introduce PBL teaching mode into the 

teaching process of various subjects, so as to improve the 

overall teaching quality. 

Acknowledgments 

This work was financially supported by 2022 "Quality 

Project" Higher Education Teaching Reform Project of 

Guangdong University of Science and Technology (Grant No. 

GKZLGC2022048).  



 

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