A Strategy for Developing End-user Developers: 'I Thought I Hated Every Minute of It, But I Learnt Such a Lot'

A continuing challenge for university lecturers is to develop successful programs that challenge students whilst at the same time responding to a ‘customer’ driven market place. In 2000, two new courses were introduced into a business degree program as a result of feedback from past and present students and the business community. These courses aimed to explore the wider issues of end-users developing smallscale applications to support their role at work whilst possessing a limited skill set in applications development. In each year (2000 and 2001) a different approach was adopted. This paper reflects upon the teaching of these two courses over the two-year period, the responses of students to the different approaches and the extent to which the learning outcomes were achieved.