Teaching functional programming to first-year students

Abstract

In the period 1986–1991, experiments have been carried out with an introductory course in computer programming, based on functional programming. Due to thorough educational design and evaluation, a successful course has been developed. This has led to a revision of the computer programming education in the first year of the computer science curriculum at the University of Twente. This article describes the approach, the aim of the computer programming course, the outline and subject matter of the course, and the evaluation. Educational research has been done to assess the quality of the course. © 1993, Cambridge University Press. All rights reserved.