A Study on Challenges and Opportunities in Teaching Programming Subject to first Year Computer Science and Engineering Students:In the Perspective of Faculty and Student

Abstract

Faculty experienced in teaching first year undergraduates agree that the students' in first year face a number of challenges. First year students are not only developing academically and intellectually, they are also establishing and maintaining good relationship around them, developing an identity, deciding about career and life style and developing integrated philosophy of life.Due to the gap in their school and engineering curriculum, learning the programming subject in their first semester become more conspicuous. In this paper, an attempt has been made to study and investigate various available opportunities and challenges faced by both fresh and experienced faculty to teach the "Computer programming in c language". A study has been conducted which comprises of a set of questions for which a collective response from the end users have been obtained. The results of this study enlighten various key areas to face the challenges and best ways to work with opportunities.