Communications of the ACM
How to solve it: modern heuristics
How to solve it: modern heuristics
Alternate version of starting out with C++
Alternate version of starting out with C++
Communications of the ACM - Blueprint for the future of high-performance networking
Communications of the ACM - Has the Internet become indispensable?
Parson's programming puzzles: a fun and effective learning tool for first programming courses
ACE '06 Proceedings of the 8th Australasian Conference on Computing Education - Volume 52
Teaching problem solving effectively
ACM Inroads
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Teaching students how to solve problems is one of the biggest challenges of most Computer Science (CS) courses. An algorithm is by definition a set of well defined steps to solve a problem. Programs are algorithms written in one of many programming languages. Recommended methods for teaching students how to solve problems include a focus on mathematics, flowcharts, UML, pseudocode, and other methods. In this paper we describe an approach that emphasizes the use of pseudocode in the introductory CS course as described in the ACM Curriculum 2001 [1]. Our approach is to teach students how to first develop a pseudocode representation of a solution to a problem and then create the code from that pseudocode. We suggest that this approach improves a student's problem solving skills while teaching the concepts required in the introductory courses.