• Journal of Engineering Education Research
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• v.13 no.2
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• pp.3-6
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• 2010

In this paper, we report a case study of applying puzzle solving as a programming practice. There are many students, who have attended computer programming language courses, have had difficulties in accomplishing the course assignments. It is because just following and citing the programming language course materials is not sufficient for constructing computer programs. Many professional developers have stated that computer programming for small problems is an art of puzzle solving, where developing enterprise-size computer programming projects involves architectural insights which are already dealt in software engineering literatures. Following those backgrounds, we have explored the applicability of puzzle solving in a C++ object oriented programming course and have reported the results. The experimental results show that puzzle solving is effective to the students who are interested in computer programming and have at least beginner-level knowledge and expertise, but it turned out that puzzle solving assignments still does not draw much attention of the students who are not seriously interested in computer programming.