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Pedagogical Changes in the Delivery of the First‐Course in Computer Science: Problem Solving, Then Programming
Author(s) -
Deek FadiP.,
Kimmel Howard,
McHugh James A.
Publication year - 1998
Publication title -
journal of engineering education
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 3.896
H-Index - 108
eISSN - 2168-9830
pISSN - 1069-4730
DOI - 10.1002/j.2168-9830.1998.tb00359.x
Subject(s) - mathematics education , curriculum , session (web analytics) , presentation (obstetrics) , active listening , class (philosophy) , course (navigation) , computer science , teaching method , active learning (machine learning) , pedagogy , psychology , engineering , artificial intelligence , medicine , communication , world wide web , radiology , aerospace engineering
A teaching reform initiative, started in the spring semester of 1993 at the New Jersey Institute of Technology (NJIT), is described. The program seeks to increase student success in a freshman computer science course, and ultimately in the entire NJIT curriculum. The traditional teaching methods where the teacher presided over a lecture session supplying facts and figures, providing ideas, and presenting problems and their solutions, has been altered. The new learning environment described in this paper aims to create an all‐inclusive setting inviting the students to make the transformation from passive learners to active participants. Rather than merely listening to lectures, students formulate problems and devise their own approaches to answering questions and finding solutions. Such a teaching/learning methodology requires instructional redesign and role redefinition. The presentation of class material is reordered as the teacher and students cross each other's confines becoming a more cohesive entity.