To get started in this course, send an email message to Greg Wilson to say 'hi'; he'll send you back these three chapters from the book Making Software:

1. Mark Guzdial: "Why Is It So Hard to Learn to Program?"
2. Michele A. Whitecraft and Wendy M. Williams: "Why Aren't More Women in Computer Science?"
3. Andrew Begel and Beth Simon: "Novice Professionals: Recent Graduates in a First Software Engineering Job"

Please also have a look at this post on the Software Carpentry blog, which compares Greg's attempt to teach online with these research-based best practices. The first thing we'll do as a group is explore how our various approaches to teaching programming do and don't fit with what we know about how people actually learn.

Happy New Year,

Greg