SDIm an introductory programming course with an ECE context

We report on the content of a pilot for a revised introductory programming course for ECE students titled “Software Design I, modified” (SDIm). SDIm incorporates pedagogical components from a course developed by our computer science department (CCS0) combined with an introduction to electric circuits and other ECE topics. SDIm is being developed in response to observations from several ECE faculty that many students, who attended the previously-offered courses in introductory C-programming had struggled with minor programming assignments throughout the ECE curriculum. The new course initially employs a simple interpreted programming environment based on “Python”. It uses simple small programs associated with mathematical and physical applications in order to illustrate the concepts of programming techniques combined with electric circuits. We expect that students will more quickly learn the fundamentals of and that they will effectively transfer these understandings to the study of C during the second half of the same course.