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Improving Undergraduate Students' Programming Skills

Authors:
Sukhamay Kundu

Keywords: work-breakdown structure; stepwise refinement; programming process.

Abstract:
Two key factors for the failure of undergraduate students in creating high quality programs are their inability to: (1) identify the basic steps in building a high-level solution algorithm, and (2) convert these steps into an elegant and efficient program implementation. Both these tasks require creative thinking and a systematic approach with emphasis on the programming process. We believe that with proper training the students can improve their programming skills and create high-quality programs. We describe a new approach to programming, which can be viewed as a refinement of the well-known "stepwise refinement" method. We use the notion of work-breakdown structure to address factor (1) and suggest a few coding techniques to address factor (2). Our initial experience in using the new approach has been very positive in terms of improved quality of student programs.

Pages: 493 to 498

Copyright: Copyright (c) IARIA, 2012

Publication date: November 18, 2012

Published in: conference

ISSN: 2308-4235

ISBN: 978-1-61208-230-1

Location: Lisbon, Portugal

Dates: from November 18, 2012 to November 23, 2012