First course in computer science, a small survey

Abstract

In many disciplines, the introductory courses are well standardized as to what should be covered, how the subject is to be taught, and how student's performance is to be measured. Such is certainly not the case in Computer Science, where we constantly debate what should be taught, what programming language is to be used, the nature of assignments to be given, etc. We wanted to see how other schools were teaching this first course, so we sent questionnaires to all the Universities listed in the ACM Graduate Assistantship Directory. From the 44 schools responding to the survey, we want to share some interesting facts concerning the manner in which Computer Science is taught.