Evolving a Programming CS2 Course: A Decade-Long Experience Report

Despite instructors' best efforts in designing and delivering any given course, changes are likely required from time to time. This experience report presents the changes made in a second-year programming course for non-computing engineering majors over a decade's worth of effort, and the reasons behind those changes. The changes were often reactive-in response to student feedback. However, many other changes were inspired by the desire to trial new interventions in the hope of strengthening the students' positive experience. In addition to personnel and course content changes, the gradual evolvement included how labs, assignments, and activities were structured and executed. Teaching delivery evolved, along with a number of small-scale interventions that eventually became integral elements of the course. When COVID-19 demanded a sudden shift to online learning, the course was prepared to adapt quickly and successfully. The contributions here come in the form of lessons learned over the past decade: what worked, and what did not. We present the large range of changes-and their rationales-that are particularly relevant and applicable to programming courses targeting engineering students where the luxury of pedagogically-friendlier programming languages is not possible.