Teaching Computer Science in a web-based environment

Programming is a major subject in Computer Science (CS) departments. However, students often face difficulties on the basic programming courses due to several factors that cause these difficulties. Maybe the most important reason is the lack of problem solving abilities that many students show. This paper describes the web-based environment Pex4Fun from Microsoft Research for teaching computer science. Pex4Fun can be used to teach and learn computer programming at many levels, from high school all the way through graduate courses. Pex4Fun was experimentally used for learning Visual Basic with college students, the results of which are presented in this paper.