Understanding abstraction
Celina Gibbs, Yvonne Coady · 2010
Given the wide ranging treatment of IT in high schools, future generations of CS1 students are bound to arrive with dramatically different levels of exposure to programming constructs. Though exposure to language mechanisms is not the take-away point from CS1, this appears to create an uneven playing field in our introductory courses. The premise of our work is that by focusing on abstraction, students connect with opportunities to engage in creative and analytical processes, potentially achieving more intellectual satisfaction--even from simple formative exercises in a first assignment.