Drop and drag - graphical user interface programming to create enthusiasm in first year programming
Heiko Er Rudolph, Suresh Venkatachalaiah, Roy Ferguson · 4th ASEE/AaeE Global Colloquium on Engineering Education · 2005
Programming has been an integral part of computing courses at universities all over Australia especially in first year undergraduate engineering. Sound programming basics in first year are essential and the methods and impressions conveyed in first year are very important for future years. For this reason, we have sought to engage student interest by teaching students to create simple but functional Graphic User Interface (GUI) programs. There was some concern as to whether GUI programming was perhaps too difficult and complicated for an introductory programming course. To establish how well students would generally be able to adapt to GUI programming a project was proposed, which presented students with the choice of both traditional console based and GUI based programming exercises. Students were able to choose freely between both methods. This paper details the results and provides a survey of students' preferences.