This study explored the relationship between assignment-based teaching methods and achievement in an introductory programming course. Subjects in the study were 42 community college students in south Mississippi. All participants completed the Watson-Glaser Critical Thinking Appraisal and the Productive Environment Preferences Survey. These instruments, along with ACT English and math score and high school math grade point average, formed the pretreatment measures. After two identical programming assignments, students in the control group wrote all programming assignments from scratch while students in the experimental group began adding their coded solutions to larger well-documented programs furnished by the researcher/instructor. Qualitative observations of students from the two groups the following semester indicated that the template methodology could have positive long-term effects on many characteristics of student programs. The programming style, documentation practices, parameter passing mechanism use, code reuse, and modularization practice of those students who had been part of the experimental group was superior to that of the control group participants. Appendices include the student consent statement, evaluation of program quality form, student information survey, comprehensive final exam, programming assignment set, and sample program template. (Contains 36 references.) (Author/MES)