Building an International and Improved Programming Course

Overview

This is a translation project and a course improvement project, rolled into one.

What we have already is a blended-learning programming course and an online MOOC based on it, both of which depend on an interactive electronic textbook (ebook) that we have iteratively developed over a number of years. The old ebook is here: https://plus.cs.hut.fi/o1/2017/toc/  It’s pretty big: in traditional terms, there’s “well over 1000 pages of text”, appendices included.

The existing ebook is in Finnish. In this project, we will make an international version of it in English. For one thing, this will help English-speaking students at Aalto (as well as some Swedish- and Finnish-speakers). For another, this allows us to provide our carefully crafted and highly evaluated learning resource to an international audience, at least for self-study purposes and possibly also in the form of an online course. Actually running a MOOC in English is beyond the scope of the present project, however.

Apart from the translation, we will improve the existing ebook – both language versions – in a number of ways. For instance, in order to serve different groups of learners better, we will create new programming exercises for a) struggling learners who they need more practice, and b) strong/motivated students who wish to take on additional challenges. We will create various new exercises that involve a custom software library that helps beginners work on graphical programs in a fun and educational way. Various other improvements are also planned, some technical, some pedagogical, and some cosmetic.