Problem Solving in Introductory Computer Science

In the Computer Science Department at the University of Kent, we have recently tried to incorporate more explicit advice about problem solving strategies into our introductory programming teaching. You can obtain some of the handouts we have produced from here. We described our experiences in Introductory Problem Solving in Computer Science in Goretti Daughton and Patricia Magee, editors, 5th Annual Conference on the Teaching of Computing, pages 36-39, Centre for Teaching Computing, Dublin City University, Dublin 9, Ireland, August 1997.

Problem Solving in General From this page you can access a number of documents which discuss the background to problem solving.
How To Program It discusses general strategies for writing small-scale programs. It is based on Polya's How To Solve it.
Programming It In Haskell shows how these ideas are used in writing small to medium-size Haskell functional programs.
Programming It In Miranda does the same thing for the Miranda functional programming language.
Problem Solving in Modula 3 consists of a set of notes on applying problem solving ideas in the imperative programming language Modula 3.

We would welcome any comments you might have on these materials; please use the form.

Written 12 June 1996 by Simon Thompson, Sally Fincher and David Barnes.

Last update: 9th May 2000.