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Session 2420

First Programming Course in Engineering: Balancing Tradition and Application

K-Y. Daisy Fan, David I. Schwartz

Department of Computer Science, Cornell University, Ithaca, New York

Abstract

The “Introduction to Programming” course is an essential part of any first-year engineering program. As part of a common first-year curriculum, one of the biggest challenges of this first programming course is to both teach fundamental programming concepts and give students practical tools that can be applied easily to upper level courses in different engineering disciplines. At Cornell University, we offer a new first-year programming course that uses two very different programming languages: MATLAB and Java. This one-semester course balances the need for working knowledge of a fundamental programming language, such as Java, and the need for working knowledge of an engineering computing tool so that upper-level courses can focus on high-level, conceptual issues rather than programming details. Furthermore, this new course accommodates students in arts and sciences who are interested in a programming course that has a strong mathematical focus instead of a more traditional programming course offered in a computer science department. This paper discusses the challenges in developing the course, the ambitious one-semester syllabus that teaches both MATLAB and Java with depth, our evaluation of this new course, and our plans for improving the programming course in a common first-year engineering curriculum.

Introduction

The “Introduction to Programming” course is an essential part of the first-year engineering curriculum that helps students develop expertise in some programming language, beyond spreadsheet computation. This first programming course is a service course, teaching computing skills that students will need in upper division engineering courses. Given the wide-ranging needs of different engineering disciplines, some undergraduate programs offer introductory programming courses within the different departments. Such a model allows the computing needs of the upper division courses in a specific field to dictate the syllabus of the introduction to programming course. This efficiency in the curriculum can incur a penalty for the students who change their major from one engineering field to another if they lack the prerequisite programming course for their new major.

At Cornell University, the College of Engineering has a “common first-year curriculum” philosophy that requires a common, one-semester, introductory programming experience for all

Proceedings of the 2003 American Society for Engineering Education Annual Conference & Exposition Copyright © 2003, American Society for Engineering Education

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Schwartz, D., & Fan, K. D. (2003, June), First Programming Course In Engineering: Balancing Tradition And Application Paper presented at 2003 Annual Conference, Nashville, Tennessee. 10.18260/1-2--12160