Designing Programming Courses For Et Students

Rochester Institute of Technology offers a three-course technical programming sequence for Engineering Technology students. All three courses are required for Computer Engineering Technology students. The first two courses are required for Telecommunications ET students. Electrical and Civil ET students are required to take only the first course of the sequence. This paper reviews and discusses the events and experiences associated with the development and initial conduct of this sequence of C++ programming courses. It details how the courses were designed to assist ET students to better succeed in higher level courses taken later in their program sequence. Foundation elements of these courses include C++ procedural and object oriented grammar and syntax, programming structures and data structures. The paper illustrates how secondary elements of a technical programming course can be selected so as to additionally promote and encourage student learning of techniques for applied technical problem solving, technical writing, software engineering, project management, team dynamics and ethics.