CS1 in Java Peer Instruction Materials

Topics Coverage Summary: Simple execution/multiple objects with turtles, Pictures and Sound, Pictures: loops (for each, for, while), if statements, 1-D and 2-D arrays.  Sounds: repeat of loops, if statements, and 1-D arrays.  Basic introduction to class design, getters/setters, constructors.

Materials Author: Beth Simon, University of California, San Diego


Sample Peer Instruction Questions (click to enlarge):


Peer Instruction Materials for CS1 in Java based on a Media Computation Approach

Textbook Based on:  ISBN: 0131496980 Introduction to Computing and Programming with Java: A Multimedia Approach.  Barbara Ericson and Mark Guzdial.

Structure:  Ten-week quarter at University of California, San Diego.  Class for majors with “no prior computing experience” (where we really mean I didn’t take a full AP class).

Uses and Adaptations:  Used by 3 other UCSD professors (beyond the developer, Beth Simon) (2 terms a year since Fall 2008) and by 2 instructors at primarily undergraduate institutions (University of San Diego and Skidmore College (instructor was TA at UCSD)).

Publications on the Class: Experience Report: CS1 for Majors with Media Computation. Beth Simon, Paivi Kinnunen, Leo Porter, Dov Zazkis. In Proceedings of the 15th Conference on Innovation and Technology in Computer Science Education (ITiCSE), 2010.

Experience Report: Peer Instruction in Introductory Computing. Beth Simon, Michael Kohanfars, Jeff Lee, Karen Tamayo, Quintin Cutts. In Proceedings of the Special Interest Group on Computer Science Education (SIGCSE) Technical Symposium, March 2010.


Creative Commons License

Slides for CS 1 in Java by Dr. Beth Simon, UCSD is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.
Based on a work at www.peerinstruction4cs.org.

Permissions beyond the scope of this license may be available at http://www.peerinstruction4cs.org/2012/03/19/theory-of-computation-peer-instruction-materials/.


Lecture Materials Overview: 

  • 1 hour 20 minute lectures
  • Lectures “overlap” (I always prepare too many slides, the next lecture starts somewhere in the middle of the last, and slides might be modified — unused slides have not been deleted).

Lecture Materials with Meta-Data on Clicker Questions:

Lecture Materials with no Meta-Data on Clicker Questions: