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

Links (extracted from people's comments)

• Gregory Brown
• Julie Pichon
• Jaelle
• MrSteve (and further thoughts)
• Duane Griffin
• Laura B