Learning/teaching a Computer Programming Course

It is commonly agreed that Computer Programming Education is a challenge for higher education programs worldwide. Although this is especially true for Computer Science (CS) programs, the development of programming skills has become relevant for many other disciplines such as engineering, mathematics, physics and cognitive science. Additionally, the programming education challenge is made even more complex by its dynamic nature (e.g. the constantly evolving technology) and the necessity to face it from the perspective of the different stakeholders involved, each of them with their own requests. Important efforts have been made around the work on students motivation, the kinds of teaching strategies as well as diverse plans for knowledge management; however treating all these as isolated strategies has not shown permanent improvements. This way, some researchers have designed and implemented holistic approaches to support the teaching and learning of computer programming. In this paper, we review some of them and conclude in a set of principles that a holistic learning approach should fulfill.