The academic success of first-year students' learning in science faculties is by no means assured, especially in an Open Distance Learning setting with its limited number of face-to-face encounters between students and lecturers or tutors. Therefore, such encounters should be highly efficient in view of the considerable amount of knowledge…

Controlling complexity through the use of abstractions is a critical part of problem solving in programming. Thus, becoming proficient with procedural and data abstraction through the use of user-defined functions is important. Properly using functions for abstraction involves a number of other core concepts, such as parameter passing, scope and…

Learning the fundamentals of programming languages has always been a difficult task for students. It is equally challenging for lecturers to teach these concepts. A number of methods have been deployed by teachers to teach these concepts. This article analyses the result of a class test to identify fundamental programming concepts that students…

In this paper, we investigate whether and how mathematics factors into students' performance in IT learning. The involved cognitive levels of students learning mathematics and hence problem solving, are correlated to how well they are able to transpose their knowledge and apply it to problem solving in the IT field(s). Our hypothesis is that if…

When teaching Geographical Information Systems (GIS) it is important to explain the theoretical elements, but it is also necessary to illustrate the basic functions with examples. To help students it is advisable to separate the teaching of fundamentals from the practical application of complex GIS software. A simple programming language like Logo…

The paper analyses the problems in selecting and integrating tools for delivering basic programming knowledge at the university level. Discussion and analysis of teaching the programming disciplines, the main principles of study programme design, requirements for teaching tools, methods and corresponding languages is presented, based on literature…

Less than one half of one percent of all processors manufactured today end up in computers. The rest are embedded in other devices such as automobiles, airplanes, trains, satellites, and nearly every modern electronic device. Developing software for embedded systems requires a greater knowledge of hardware than developing for a typical desktop…

Based on a computer-science course, this article outlines an alternative ordering of programming concepts that aims to develop a reuse habit before other styles of programming are developed. Although the discussion is based on transition from Modula-2 to C++, the issues raised apply to transition from any procedural to any object-oriented…

A study of 89 computer programming students in two instructional groups found that those using Visual Basic (VB) mastered programming design concepts as well as those using traditional BASIC. Concludes that VB is an excellent choice for a first programming course (high school or university) emphasizing sequence, selection, iteration, variables,…

A considerable amount of experiences in teaching object-oriented concepts using the Java language have been reported to date, some of which describe language pitfalls and concrete learning difficulties. In this paper, a number of additional issues that have been experienced as difficult for students to master, along with approaches intended to…