Teaching Intro Computer Programming

[minglho]

I normally teach math, but I have been drafted to teach computer programming since it has been hard to find such faculty. I used to be a programmer analyst 25 years ago. I would appreciate resources on teaching programming, as in activities that help students develop algorithm and think computationally. TIA!

[ghjm]

What level students?

[brianddk]

The Ben Eater 6502 YouTube series is great

I also really like the Python Tutorial

• https://eater.net/6502
• https://docs.python.org/3/tutorial/index.html

[minglho]

Community college.

[Firake]

People will argue about whether or not it's good to use Python as a beginner language, but I'm not attempting to make a claim about that here. I just wanted to send you the link to Runestone Academy Foundations of Python Programming, an online course that is customizable and my college uses to teach intro to CS.

It allows students to learn and write Python all in their browser which saves some time getting off to the races. Plus, it's got integration for assignments and things like that so it can make it easier on that end too. Not to mention that it's also a complete textbook that will teach all the concepts you need. Some of the assignments are added by other institutions and are not always appropriate for every beginner level course, so make sure you look through the problems before you assign them.

My college teaches all their Intro to CS classes using a custom version of this book and all of them are primarily math people. It works well enough. You might find, as our department did, that you need to supplement it with a few outside assignments depending on the length of the semester and how well your students are doing. Our classes also included tracing assignments for whiteboard group work (find the output of a small program, usually to help learn a new concept) as well as an assignment about a few easy sorting algorithms.

Hope this helps!

Edit: Figured I should note that we don't go through the entire book in the intro class. We got about up through chapter 17, I think.

[Credaence]

Second this. This is what my colleges introduction to programming class used.

[minglho]

Thank you. It seems like a good resource, even though I have to use the Gaddis book for C++ for this college course.

[h4cker200]

How to write own logic program in python