Teaching Programming – A Journey from Teacher to Motivator

Few would disagree that learning to program is a fundamental part of degree-level education in computing. Fewer would disagree that teaching programming effectively in today’s mass Higher Education is a problem. The graduating student who professes a complete inability to write the simplest program is commonplace. This paper argues that the primary role of a teacher of programming is not as a communicator of information, as in many other subjects or areas of computing. Rather, the teacher’s main role is that of a motivator. The students must be motivated to engage in tasks that will make them learn, and it is the teacher’s job to ensure this. The role of communicating information such as the basics of syntax in a lecture theatre is very much secondary