Educators in higher education can help learners to improve their problem solving skills by acquiring expertise in coding and programming.
Students may often lack problem solving skills and computational thinking training, both of which are important in learning programming language concepts. The way that programming is taught in schools affects how students perceive programming and their later ability to understand and use the programming concepts learnt to solve problems. The way that teaching is realised is important, too. The focus should not be on writing code but on reading code and the focus not on syntax but rather on proper application of the language.
An example of a simple programming task is to use the Pepper robot and create codes /commands for Pepper to do simple activities such as polls or give short guidance.
Attard, L. & Busuttil, L. 2020. Teacher Perspectives on Introducing Programming Constructs through Coding Mobile-Based Games to Secondary School Students. https://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/EJ1279547.pdf