Practicing Abstraction through a Top-Down Problem-Solving Framework in a CS1 Course

Mastering abstraction skills is a crucial learning outcome for computer science students. However, students often struggle with these skills and can quickly feel overwhelmed when required to apply them. In our Introduction to Programming (CS1) course, we explicitly teach abstraction by providing a framework where students must solve problems from higher to lower levels of abstraction. This paper presents this framework and demonstrates its application through a collaborative activity that simulates large- scale development projects. This paper also examines students’ perception and performance at each level of abstraction over three sessions of the activity. The findings highlight the concepts that should be prioritized to better prepare students for each session. They also emphasize the importance of illustrating to students the function of abstraction in problem-solving and its relevance to their future work life, as a complement to traditional academic activities.