DEPARTMENT OF COMPUTER SCIENCE COLLOQUIUM SERIES

Michael Kölling, University of Kent

Motivating students in introductory programming courses
Wednesday, October 28, 2009, 1pm
70-3445

ABSTRACT
One of the important challenges we face in early programming courses
is to stir the interest and curiosity of our students. We do not only
have to teach the concepts, we also have to motivate students to
develop an interest in the field of computer science in general or
programming in particular.

Programming has become worryingly unpopular among teenagers in the
last decade. Enrollment numbers in computing related degrees at
universities have fallen steeply since the turn of the century,
and among the students that do come, failure rates are often high.

In this presentation, I will talk about various ideas to increase
motivation of students, which might lead to better interest, better
performance, and maybe even rising enrollment numbers.

BIOGRAPHY
Michael Kölling is a Professor at the Computing Laboratory,
University of Kent, in Canterbury, UK. He holds a PhD in computer
science from Sydney University, and has worked in Australia,
Denmark and the UK. Michael?s research interests are in the
areas of object-oriented systems, programming languages,
software tools, computing education and HCI. He has published
numerous papers on object-orientation and computing education
topics and is the author of two Java textbooks. Michael is the
lead developer of BlueJ and Greenfoot, two educational programming
environments. In 2008, Michael was awarded a National Teaching
Fellowship by the Higher Education Academy.