Enhancement Of An Introductory Computing Course With Experiential And Cooperative Learning

For the past seventeen years the University of Wyoming College of Engineering has had a freshman level computing and problem solving course in which freshmen were introduced problem solving strategies and computing to support those strategies. Several years ago it was observed that interest in the course could be increased if some physically based exercises could be introduced in the laboratory to give hands-on work done in the cooperative learning setting. The work reported here is the initial efforts toward implementation of those concepts.