Making the Analogy: Alternative Delivery Techniques for First Year Programming Courses

This paper discusses some of the fundamental problems encountered by students on first year computer programming courses at Irish Institutes of Technology. It’s content is based on the author’s practical experience in the classroom and programming laboratories which will be supported in the near future by empirical data gathering. The reasons for many difficulties experienced by students are discussed. The objective of the proposed research is to use the analogy-based approach to learning. A structure called an analogy tree will be built and implemented in a learning tool which will use animation to simulate the relevant analogies. Finally, the future work required, and, potential problems for this project will be discussed .