Teaching a CS introductory course : an active approach

Abstract

Computer Science (CS) introductory courses seem to abound in non-motivated students. This may have led to the high failure and withdrawal rates reported on such courses, especially when deductive based teaching approaches are used. Deductive instruction begins with theories and progresses to applications of those theories. Active approaches to teaching are more inductive. Inductive instruction begins with the presentation of, for instance, a specific problem that introduces a topic, and theories are taught on a need-to-know basis. This pilot study describes how active teaching and learning techniques have been successfully applied on a CS introductory course, reducing its failure and withdrawal rates. However, instructors should be aware that if students are given an open-ended ill-structured term project they may not end up mastering CS fundamentals; and thus, they may end up having a hard time applying the latter to small and simple programming exercises.