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From: taylor@sun.soe.clarkson.edu (Ross Taylor)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.fortran
Subject: Teaching Fortran
Message-ID: <9103131812.AA17727@sun.soe.clarkson.edu>
Date: 13 Mar 91 18:12:17 GMT
Lines: 44


Teaching Fortran to University Students
---------------------------------------

I work at a small university in upstate NY.  Most of the 
students are engineers of one sort or another.  All eng. 
students are required to take a first semester course which, 
among other things, attempts to teach them Fortran.  For a 
variety of reasons the course fails in that regard.  The 
students are unable to create even the simplest of programs and 
get them write (pun intended).

As a result, we are currently debating the re-structuring of the 
Fortran course and/or its timing.  I would like to hear from 
fellow readers of this newsgroup who are involved with education 
how their institution and/or dept handles any programming 
requirements.

I would be particularly interested in comments on the following 
questions:

1.  Do you actually teach programming itself or are your 
    students expected to pick up programming skills in order to
    solve problems that are best solved with a computer?

2.  When is the first programming course given (first or second 
    semseter, first or second year etc)?

3.  Do you require Fortran, or are other languages acceptable?

4.  If you do teach programming (syntax etc) as part of any 
    required course, what percentage of the time is spent on 
    this topic?  Any non-Fortran, non-programming material 
    covered? Any other comments on course content would be 
    gratefully received as well.

Thanks in advance for any replies.

Ross Taylor
Department of Chemical Engineering
Clarkson University
Potsdam, New York 13699 (yes, we have our own zip code)

taylor@sun.soe.clarkson.edu