CUTE-the design and evolution of a first year programming environment

Author

Churcher, N.I. ; Cockburn, A.J.G. ; McMaster, B.N. ; Horlor, J.

Author_Institution

Dept. of Comput. Sci., Canterbury Univ., Christchurch, New Zealand

fYear

1998

fDate

26-29 Jan 1998

Firstpage

142

Lastpage

148

Abstract

A first computer science course should give students an appreciation of software engineering principles and not merely teach programming skills in isolation. This is a difficult task, especially within the constraints imposed by a semester system. We report the evolution of the Canterbury University Teaching Environment (CUTE) which we have used successfully since 1993 to support our first year programming courses. CUTE provides novice programmers with a simple graphical user interface (GUI) to important software development tools and services while shielding them from the underlying Unix system. This not only allows students to focus on core material within the constraints of the semester system but also simplifies administration

Keywords

computer science education; courseware; educational courses; graphical user interfaces; programming; programming environments; teaching; CUTE; Canterbury University Teaching Environment; GUI; first computer science course; first year programming courses; first year programming environment; novice programmers; programming skills; semester system; simple graphical user interface; software development tools; software engineering principles; students; Computer science; Design optimization; Education; Electrical capacitance tomography; Graphical user interfaces; Programming environments; Programming profession; Read only memory; Skeleton; Software engineering;

fLanguage

English

Publisher

ieee

Conference_Titel

Software Engineering: Education & Practice, 1998. Proceedings. 1998 International Conference

Conference_Location

Dunedin

Print_ISBN

0-8186-8828-9

Type

conf

DOI

10.1109/SEEP.1998.707644

Filename

707644