Engaging students and teaching modern concepts

Abstract

This paper describes our experience in using situated programming to deliver modern computer science concepts in the introductory programming course at Carnegie Mellon University. We used an artificial life simulation and taught object-oriented programming as well as more traditional material. The course was an experience, not an experiment, since many aspects of the course simultaneously changed from prior offerings. Nevertheless, what we saw was fundamental and potentially far-reaching. The most important result was that students were intellectually engaged. They came to grips with basic object-oriented programming, they mastered the topics of procedural programming, they learned first hand about computer simulation, they learned perhaps a bit about biology. Most importantly, through it all they used programming to express and explore their own powerful and novel ideas.