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Automating introductory computer science courses

Published:01 January 1973Publication History
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Abstract

This paper describes a project we have recently started for automating introductory computer science courses. Why should these courses be automated? At the University of Illinois there are currently about 2000 students per semester taking various introductory programming courses: engineers, social scientists, teachers, physical scientists, computer science majors, etc., each group having its own particular needs. These courses are taught in sections of about 100 students each, with an additional hour of discussion in groups of about 20 students. In our experience it is very difficult to organize these courses in such a way that students both learn something and are happy with the material presented. The main difficulty seems to come from the fact that a beginning programmer needs a lot of individual help, and this cannot be provided in large sections. We are now convinced that these courses cannot be improved within the current setup, and since enrollments in these courses are increasing, the situation is bound to grow worse unless something new is tried. We assume that the situation we have described is typical of many large universities.

References

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  1. Automating introductory computer science courses

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      • Published in

        cover image ACM SIGCSE Bulletin
        ACM SIGCSE Bulletin  Volume 5, Issue 1
        Proceedings of the 3rd SIGCSE symposium on Computer science education
        February 1973
        171 pages
        ISSN:0097-8418
        DOI:10.1145/953053
        Issue’s Table of Contents
        • cover image ACM Conferences
          SIGCSE '73: Proceedings of the third SIGCSE technical symposium on Computer science education
          January 1973
          185 pages
          ISBN:9781450373753
          DOI:10.1145/800010

        Copyright © 1973 ACM

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        Association for Computing Machinery

        New York, NY, United States

        Publication History

        • Published: 1 January 1973

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