A comprehensive pedagogical model for teaching Python programming fundamentals: Integrating case studies and web platforms

Abstract

The demand for skilled specialists in the IT labor market has persisted, while university educational practices continue to be predominantly theoretical – students understand the syntax but struggle when face with real-world professional challenges. This gap is the subject of this article: the methodological foundations of practice-oriented Python instruction in higher education.The study sets out to justify, empirically, whether practice-oriented tasks combined with web-based educational platforms improve teaching outcomes for Python. To get there, we relied on a mix of methods-systematic literature review, comparative pedagogical analysis, a pedagogical experiment, and statistical processing of the resulting data. We also compared how programming courses are taught in Kazakhstani universities against several institutions abroad, alongside the digital platforms each of them uses.The results came out fairly clear: situational tasks, case-based learning, and interactive web platforms, used together, push students’ algorithmic thinking and hands-on programming skills forward. To test this, we ran a quasi-experiment with 50 students-25 in the experimental group, 25 in the control group-and the experimental group scored significantly higher across every single assessment criterion (p<0.001, for what it’s worth, a fairly strong result for a study this size).The novelty of the study lies not in the use of three separate tools, but in their integration into a unified model: practice-oriented tasks, the case method, and web-based platforms are combined within a single methodological framework.