Programming Language and Introductory Programming
A Survey of Literature on the Teaching of Introductory
Programming
Arnold Pears,
Stephen Seidman,
Uppsala Uni., Sweden
Uni. of Central Arkansas, USA
Arnold.Pears@it.uu.se
sseidman@uca.edu
Lauri Malmi,
Linda Mannila
Elizabeth Adams
Helsinki Uni. of Tech., Finland
Åbo Akademi Uni., Finland
James Madison Uni., USA
lma@hut.fi
Linda.Mannila@abo.fi
adamses@jmu.edu
Jens Bennedsen
Marie Devlin
James Paterson
IT Uni. West, Denmark
Newcastle Uni., UK
Glasgow Caledonian Uni., UK
jbb@it-vest.dk
Marie.Devlin@newcastle.ac.uk
James.Paterson@gcal.ac.uk
ABSTRACT
The audience for this paper includes computing faculty who are planning, designing, developing, revising or implementing a new course that introduces programming concepts to novice programmers. Design and development of such a course may be influenced by many factors, including the history and culture of the department offering the course, the needs of prospective employers, the requirements of accreditation or assessment bodies, as well as national and international perspectives on computing education.
We discuss some of these issues below. Within the local context created by these factors, the results of decades of computing education research can provide important input to the course design process. This paper seeks to provide course designers with an overview of evidence-based papers in the computing education research literature that have had an influence on the practice of teaching. Evidence-based research is defined as the use of literature and results from relevant areas of the scholarship of teaching and learning to motivate and support teaching practice. The nature and quality of evidence is determined by the level of agreement of research literature as to what is known in the area. We assume that readers of this paper have little experience or exposure to general literature in the theory of teaching and learning in higher
Programming
Arnold Pears,
Stephen Seidman,
Uppsala Uni., Sweden
Uni. of Central Arkansas, USA
Arnold.Pears@it.uu.se
sseidman@uca.edu
Lauri Malmi,
Linda Mannila
Elizabeth Adams
Helsinki Uni. of Tech., Finland
Åbo Akademi Uni., Finland
James Madison Uni., USA
lma@hut.fi
Linda.Mannila@abo.fi
adamses@jmu.edu
Jens Bennedsen
Marie Devlin
James Paterson
IT Uni. West, Denmark
Newcastle Uni., UK
Glasgow Caledonian Uni., UK
jbb@it-vest.dk
Marie.Devlin@newcastle.ac.uk
James.Paterson@gcal.ac.uk
ABSTRACT
The audience for this paper includes computing faculty who are planning, designing, developing, revising or implementing a new course that introduces programming concepts to novice programmers. Design and development of such a course may be influenced by many factors, including the history and culture of the department offering the course, the needs of prospective employers, the requirements of accreditation or assessment bodies, as well as national and international perspectives on computing education.
We discuss some of these issues below. Within the local context created by these factors, the results of decades of computing education research can provide important input to the course design process. This paper seeks to provide course designers with an overview of evidence-based papers in the computing education research literature that have had an influence on the practice of teaching. Evidence-based research is defined as the use of literature and results from relevant areas of the scholarship of teaching and learning to motivate and support teaching practice. The nature and quality of evidence is determined by the level of agreement of research literature as to what is known in the area. We assume that readers of this paper have little experience or exposure to general literature in the theory of teaching and learning in higher