Evolution Of Freshman Software Tools Class

שמור ב:
מידע ביבליוגרפי
הוצא לאור ב:Association for Engineering Education - Engineering Library Division Papers (Jun 12, 2005), p. 10.599.1
מחבר ראשי: Thomas, Garth
יצא לאור:
American Society for Engineering Education-ASEE
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גישה מקוונת:Citation/Abstract
Full text outside of ProQuest
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100 1 |a Thomas, Garth 
245 1 |a Evolution Of Freshman Software Tools Class 
260 |b American Society for Engineering Education-ASEE  |c Jun 12, 2005 
513 |a Conference Proceedings 
520 3 |a Three years ago, the Leonard C. Nelson College of Engineering replaced a traditional programming course for engineers with an applied software tools course. This course was expected to better prepare the students for later courses as well as develop skills that would be useful in their professional careers. Students learn the basics of Excel®, Mathcad®, and Visual Basic for Applications® programming while using them for engineering applications. While the content of the course has not changed significantly since its inception, the delivery has. Much of this change in delivery was driven by student retention. Almost half of the students either dropped the course or earned less than satisfactory grades when the course was first offered. Subsequent modifications have greatly improved retention and student performance without compromising the quality of the course. The paper will focus on the initial design of the course, the retention issues that developed, and the modifications to course delivery that were made to address these issues. Grading policy, structure of the course content, and active learning exercises were keys to improvement. We will show how changes in these facets of course management led to better course outcomes. The paper also discusses the effects of prior computer experience and mathematics preparation on the retention problem. Purpose of the course The software tools course was designed as a replacement for a traditional computer- programming course. Like many other engineering programs, instruction in a programming language had been required for all engineering majors at the West Virginia University Institute of Technology (WVU Tech), and was offered during the freshman year. This course was taught by the Computer Science faculty, and used C++ as the programming language. Principle topics of this course were language syntax, logic structures, and program development. At the end of the course, students were to have a rudimentary knowledge of programming concepts and the ability to write programs that may be needed in later classes. There was also a general belief among the faculty that the process of learning a programming language would develop logical thinking skills. “Proceedings of the 2005 American Society for Engineering Education Annual Conference & Exposition Copyright 2005, American Society for Engineering Education ” 
653 |a Software 
653 |a Programming languages 
653 |a Learning 
653 |a Engineering education 
653 |a Student retention 
653 |a Skills 
653 |a Design modifications 
653 |a Engineering 
653 |a Visual programming languages 
653 |a Visual Basic for Applications 
653 |a Students 
653 |a Colleges & universities 
653 |a Software development tools 
653 |a Computer science 
653 |a Retention 
653 |a Mathematics 
653 |a Computer assisted instruction--CAI 
653 |a Thinking skills 
653 |a Computers 
653 |a Attrition 
653 |a Syntax 
653 |a Syntactic structures 
653 |a Language acquisition 
653 |a Academic achievement 
653 |a Teaching 
653 |a College faculty 
653 |a Education 
653 |a Language attitudes 
653 |a Work skills 
653 |a Language 
773 0 |t Association for Engineering Education - Engineering Library Division Papers  |g (Jun 12, 2005), p. 10.599.1 
786 0 |d ProQuest  |t Library Science Database 
856 4 1 |3 Citation/Abstract  |u https://www.proquest.com/docview/2318055996/abstract/embedded/L8HZQI7Z43R0LA5T?source=fedsrch 
856 4 0 |3 Full text outside of ProQuest  |u https://peer.asee.org/evolution-of-freshman-software-tools-class