The date of this interesting submission (haven't I seen this on HN before?) is Jul 14, 2006. What has happened since then? What follow-up research has there been on the methods of first-time undergraduate introduction to programming courses? (If I remember correctly, someone on HN has pointed to follow-up papers by the same author in some earlier HN thread, but what I would especially like to see is attempts at replication by other researchers
and attempts by other researchers to look at the problem from other points of view.)
There are quite a few undergraduate disciplines in which it is assumed that most first-year undergraduates will not continue studying the discipline. In some disciplines that is considered a bug, but in some that is considered a feature. It's too bad that many undergraduates registering for a first-year course don't know that their professors don't expect most learners in the class to succeed. What would college enrollments in different subjects look like if there were more disclosure of that pessimistic attitude?
(Basis of knowledge: I have one son who is an adult now, the child of two nonprogrammer parents who is now a computer science major, who first learned programming through a CTD course in programming taught by T. J. Leone
and some more or less haphazard local classes in programming arranged by our homeschooling support group, which includes parents who are programmers by occupation. He was advanced in mathematics before he began his programming studies.)
http://norvig.com/experiment-design.html
and attempts by other researchers to look at the problem from other points of view.)
There are quite a few undergraduate disciplines in which it is assumed that most first-year undergraduates will not continue studying the discipline. In some disciplines that is considered a bug, but in some that is considered a feature. It's too bad that many undergraduates registering for a first-year course don't know that their professors don't expect most learners in the class to succeed. What would college enrollments in different subjects look like if there were more disclosure of that pessimistic attitude?
(Basis of knowledge: I have one son who is an adult now, the child of two nonprogrammer parents who is now a computer science major, who first learned programming through a CTD course in programming taught by T. J. Leone
http://tjleone.com/
(who now offers a different course, based on different materials) and the EPGY distance learning course in C programming
http://epgy.stanford.edu/courses/cs/
and some more or less haphazard local classes in programming arranged by our homeschooling support group, which includes parents who are programmers by occupation. He was advanced in mathematics before he began his programming studies.)