[AISWorld] Summary for Query about Intro Programming Course

[Golub, Beth - Hoboken]

Thanks to all who responded to my query earlier this week about intro programming.  I received 19 responses, 11 from the US, 4 from Australia & New Zealand, 3 from Europe and 1 from South Africa.  Please see summary below.

If you have not responded yet but would still like to, I'd be happy to receive your input within the next week.
 
Best wishes, and thanks again for the useful responses.
- Beth Golub, Editor, IS Textbooks, John Wiley & Sons, Inc.


QUESTION 1:  DOES YOUR DEPARTMENT REQUIRE AN INTRODUCTORY PROGRAMMING COURSE FOR IS/CIS/MIS MAJORS?

All 19 respondents answered YES.  Comments included:

USQ has a combined Bachelor of IT degree which covers both CS and IS, in that degree we have a common Foundation Programming Course that students do as part of their core courses.

Yes. Both undergraduate and graduate level.

Yes. We have two required courses.

Our MIS curriculum requires two programming courses, one introductory (sort of programming logic, it's a new course, 200 level) and the second is an actual programming course (business application development, 300 level).

IS concentrators are required to have some programming. 

Yes for undergrads.   For MS-IS students we incorporate programming into other courses.

Yes, and is also required for all business majors.

yes, first year of a three or four year degree (Bachelor of Commerce and Administration)

Yes, require two CS courses


QUESTION 2, IF YES, WHAT PROGRAMMING LANGUAGE IS USED IN THE COURSE?

VB.net and Java are tied at 8 respondents each.  See below for complete tally.  Note that some respondents noted more than one language, due to courses at the grad and undergrad levels or multiple course for undergrads.

vb.net - 8 
Java - 8
C#.net and C# - 4
Java Script - 2
Ajax - 1
JSP - 1
Python - 1
C - 1


QUESTION 3, IS IT IMPORTANT FOR THE COURSE TEXTBOOK TO INCLUDE BUSINESS EXAMPLES?

16 of the 19 respondents said yes.  Comments included:

>From an IS perspective - yes, we have required that CS include business examples as part of the teaching of the Foundation Programming course

Yes. Easier to introduce in class. Easier for students to relate to their field (interest rate, marketing, customer segmentation.....). We have students from other departments in the business school.

Nice but not critical  

I think it is very important for the book to include business examples since business students are not interested in finding the area of a circle or a square.

Very. In my experience many of the textbooks provide abstract examples, such as solving mathematical problems, drawing shapes etc. which while having value from a  learning perspective bear no relationship to the problems students will encounter in the real-world. I find myself having to develop more industry-type examples when I am teaching programming to make the experience more real for the students.

I think it is useful if the examples are relevant to the students and desirable if some are business related, but it is also fine to use examples that relate to knowledge work or digital life in general.

Yes, but non-business majors could also take the course, but mostly if they are interested in business applications.

yes, we are an information systems bias and do not teach computer science students, therefore simple business problems are best.

Absolutely and the current book does not have any such examples.

Yes, definitely

No, but it helps.  


QUESTION 4, IF YES, WHAT KIND OF BUSINESS EXAMPLES WOULD YOU LIKE AN INTRODUCTORY PROGRAMMING TEXTBOOK TO INCLUDE?

Ones simple enough for first years without any knowledge of business and organisations to follow.  Not just north American cases.  Ones that also give insight into business, without requiring tons of vocabulary to be taught.  Ones that allow students to get insights into how IT adds value to a business.

At all stages in the teaching of basic programming (sequence, selection, repetition, file handling) we would like to see examples of how this would be applied to business needs.

example related to different business processes

loan/interest/mortgage calculation, simple risk modeling, sales analysis...... 

I create a combination of scientific examples with calculations, unit conversions, credit cards, and investments, profit, and database.

Tablet, smartphone, supply chain, environmental management, security, electronic medical records;  Some of these might be hard to do in the context of a first programming class.

The kind of example that I would love to see, which was used in an out-of-print Java book, is a book-long example that students can follow throughout the semester, like reading a novel and watching its characters grow as you read on. This example was presented in the book Object-Oriented Application Development using Java, by E. Reed Doke, John W. Satzinger, and Susan Rebstock Williams

I have found finance ones quite useful e.g. compound interest, loan repayment, pension calculators as many students take up positions in financial institutions. I have used inventory and payoll calculators, determining the price of tickets depending on discounts etc.. Other examples include searching and display applications, e.g retrieving information from a database/server and displaying it in appropriate formats. I could go on but these are just some of the examples I have personally developed.

Any type is fine.  It's awfully hard to have meaningful examples for the introductory programming course, as the applications are simple of necessity.

the primary factor should be good examples for learning code.  business relevance is of second priority.  a "cash register" example has worked well for us at the intro level.  some examples involving storing data.  some examples interacting with online services.  

My opinion: a sampling across the functional areas of business (marketing, operations, finance, accounting, etc.), plus a sampling across industries, so be sure to have some healthcare industry examples, which is a very active area for IT right now.  Also, the focus should be toward developing user interfaces and accessing databases (especially Microsoft Access databases) to store and retrieve information.  Thus, it should include some basic information on characteristics of a good user interface design and on why databases are needed.  Only use examples of well-design databases.  These are the typical applications that they will use Visual Basic for.

I don't really mind, but simple and relevant to NZ (or Australia). Large-scale US style business problems - our students don't relate to them well, we mainly have SME's in our country.

Price times quantity, payroll decision structures,  order processing, inventory etc and some SQL examples as well will be helpful.

A mixture between business examples that would be "real world" examples and those that students (with limited/no business knowledge) can relate to

Files & Databases manipulation, Web programming, interaction with commercial Web 2.0 services (e.g. Google, Twitter, Facebook), Data mining, business process

a variety

It would be nice if they have business examples but not essential, as we offer our own advanced programming courses in IS program. For these, we typically provide our own examples as there aren't textbooks available to support these kinds of courses