A Web Based Environment for Learning to Program

The purpose of this paper is to describe in detail the current development status of the innovative Environment for Learning to Program (ELP) which provides an interactive web-based environment for teaching programming to the first year Information Technology students at Queensland University of Technology (QUT). ELP allows students to program at the early stages of their course without the need to familiarize themselves with a program development environment. Most importantly, it eliminates all the difficulties associated with installing and running a Java compiler. Using ELP, students learn and develop their problem solving skills by working with program template exercises on the web. ELP provides a learning environment which meets the diverse needs of students .