A supplementary package for distance education students studying introductory programming

Abstract

Teaching introductory programming can be a challenging task. Students can become too concerned with learning syntax at the expense of more general conceptual understanding. Distance education students in particular often have problems as the difficulty of the course content is compounded by the problems of isolation from other students and their tutor. Although instructional strategies for emphasising conceptual knowledge are well known for face-to-face instruction, there has been little attempt to apply them to the external situation. This paper describes a supplementary package for external students designed to address some of these problems. The package has been used for two semesters and feedback from students indicates that they find it a valuable resource.