Evaluation of Java resources for first year programming

Within the Faculty of Information Technology, the computing undergraduate degrees require all students to undertake programming as part of their first year of study. Each degree has some variation on emphasis within the programming subjects (i.e. network computing, computer science, commercial computing), as well as a variety of teaching methods (i.e. lecture / tutorial instruction, distance education needs and problem-based learning environments). The following Research reports on a large team-directed study that was in progress when it became a part of the CUTSD Action Inquiry project. The aim of the original project, which received a Faculty Teaching Innovations Fund grant, was to develop a series of shared modular resources intended to supplement and support first year programming in Java. The grant was awarded to CERG (the faculty's Computing Education Research Group). It was intended that the lecturers teaching a course could use these resources as they saw fit, e.g., as demonstrations during a lecture, or as exercises for students to work through during tutorials, or as additional resources for them to use at home. The resources therefore were not tied to any particular course's sequence of topics, but were intended to be stand-alone. [Introduction]