A Self-Paced Introductory Programming Course

In this paper, a required introductory programming course being taught to MIS undergraduates using the C++ programming language is described. Two factors make the objectives of the course—which are to provide students with an exposure to the logical organization of the computer in addition to teaching them basic programming logic—particularly challenging to achieve. First, students enter the course with widely varying backgrounds, with roughly equal numbers having no prior exposure to programming courses, having taken one previous course and having taken two or more previous courses. They also have different work aspirations, with about half believing it is unlikely that they will be employed as programmers within 10 years. This makes choosing an appropriate amount of material to cover problematic. Second, many of the students chose MIS as a major (as opposed to computer science) specifically to avoid the necessity of learning programming. This leads to motivational barriers.