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A supplementary package for distance education students studying introductory programming

Published:01 March 1996Publication History
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Abstract

Teaching introductory programming can be a challenging task. Students can become too concerned with learning syntax at the expense of more general conceptual understanding. Distance education students in particular often have problems as the difficulty of the course content is compounded by the problems of isolation from other students and their tutor. Although instructional strategies for emphasising conceptual knowledge are well known for face-to-face instruction, there has been little attempt to apply them to the external situation. This paper describes a supplementary package for external students designed to address some of these problems. The package has been used for two semesters and feedback from students indicates that they find it a valuable resource.

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    • Published in

      cover image ACM SIGCSE Bulletin
      ACM SIGCSE Bulletin  Volume 28, Issue 1
      March 1996
      379 pages
      ISSN:0097-8418
      DOI:10.1145/236462
      Issue’s Table of Contents
      • cover image ACM Conferences
        SIGCSE '96: Proceedings of the twenty-seventh SIGCSE technical symposium on Computer science education
        March 1996
        447 pages
        ISBN:089791757X
        DOI:10.1145/236452

      Copyright © 1996 ACM

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      Association for Computing Machinery

      New York, NY, United States

      Publication History

      • Published: 1 March 1996

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