Programming techniques and environments in a technology management department

Abstract

Teaching and learning programming is widely known to be quite problematic. Designing and deploying programming courses is also quite complex. Several choices have to made, such as selecting the first programming technique and language, the sequence of programming techniques presented to students, the programming environments and the teaching approaches utilized. In this paper, the rationale of the sequence of programming techniques and languages taught at a Technology Management Department, as well as the decisions that have been made for a smoother transition from the imperative to the object-oriented programming technique in terms of the environments and the teaching approaches used are presented. Furthermore, students' replies in a questionnaire regarding their difficulties with this sequence of programming techniques and learning programming in general are analyzed.