Television as an aid to the teaching of programming
G Riding, S.H. Lavington · ITNOW · 1975
The service teaching of programming to non-specialists is an area characterised by large numbers of students requiring short courses with many timetabling constraints. Television, in the form of videotaped programmes plus booklets, is one of the educational aids available to help with such service teaching. A recent survey[1] revealed the existence of 19 high-level language television courses produced by various British universities. Previous attempts to assess the value of such courses[2], have tended to concentrate on general educational factors and overall cost-effectiveness. There has been little measurement of the final programming skill attained by students receiving television-based instruction, as compared with students taught by more conventional means. It should be said at once that such comparisons may not reveal any significant differences if in fact a student acquires programming skill purely by practice at writing programs and independently of the method adopted for teaching the theory. Whilst a postgraduate may well be able to teach himself from a manual, it is more likely that the undergraduate relies for inspiration and information on a course lecturer. There is therefore a need to perform a controlled experiment. The results will be relative, and should indicate whether the use of television as an aid to programming instruction has any effect on the final performance of the students as programmers.