ALGORITHMS AND INITIAL PROGRAMMING : DIFFERENT PUBLIC , DIFFERENT TEACHING-LEARNING ?

How to teach the first steps in programming is an old question: How to teach? What to teach? Who learns best? What is the right age to start? Women are just as capable as men? All these issues concern IT teachers. We can have much experience teaching algorithms and initial programming but we have no certainties; we need have the best clues to improve performance. The study of this paper compares two completely different groups: one consisting of college students a 1st cycle degree in computer science and another group of unemployed adults. The surveys were completed at the beginning and at the end of an introductory module to programming concepts, using top-down and algorithms. The first survey (initial) focuses on taste, dexterity, use and computer prior knowledge, the second (final) on the ease/difficulty with algorithmic reasoning, as well as its self-assessment for some taught knowledge during the module (such as read/write variables), use of cycles and if-then-else. The focus is to teach each person differently according to their characteristics. That would be excellent. This study characterizes the students so that they learn best.


INTRODUCTION
The introductory teaching of programming in the early years of the computer science area has a high rate of failures [1].The introductory programming courses (U.C.) have an unquestionable importance in the 1st cycle Informatics curriculum by the importance of their materials either by its positioning in 1ºs years of the plans of the courses.The performance in these U.C. will decisively influence the success or failure of the rest of 1st cycle studies.Since she graduated the author has been teaching introduction to programming.So it has directly observed various types of difficulties encountered by students: in the apprehension of knowledge and by the fellow teachers in form and content to teach.This type of U.C. have high failure rates [2] [3] [4] [5].In these years I have investigated in order to find clues to an improvement of this teaching / learning: different approach different the public, content (what to teach?), programming languages (an old question in the teaching of programming).This article is the comparison between two very different student groups: a group consisting of students from the first year of a degree in computer science and another group consisting of unemployed who wish to (re)enter into the world of employment and who attended a web programming course.Both groups attended to one initial module of initial programming and algorithms.The two were asked to answer two surveys: an initial characterization and another final to measure the difficulties encountered.

THE INQUIRIES
Both inquiries were answered with Google Drive.They intended to be anonymous for obvious reasons, however was sought so that the number of student (in the case of the first group) and name (in the case of the second group) were filled in order to check whether any students answer to more than one investigation and to be able to cross the original investigation and final, as well as the grades obtained.In this first survey were asked: a) Personal information: Number of student, year birth, Sex.To the second group were asked about qualifications and area of qualifications.b) Relationship with technology (1-none to 5-very): Taste for technology?Interest in technology?Technological possess?And Motivation for learning ITs.c) Do you have an account on Facebook, Gmail, YouTube, Instagram, Snapchat, Twitter, LinkedIn, Google+ Blogs / WordPress?d) Often uses digital library, Wikipedia, Google.e) Usually the web serves to: Social networks, newspapers, digital libraries, Games, E-mail.f) It has 3G, 4G, PS4 (or similar), Portable, Tablet, Smartphone.g) In Word can do: sections, chapters Index of figures / tables ... Manage references, Headers / Footers different, Cross-reference.h) In Excel can do: Insert formulas / functions, using filters, create graphics, sorting.I) In PowerPoint you can do: Timings, Animations, Use the Slide Master, Transitions.j) To the first group: any TI discipline in the secondary?If yes: what subjects they had?In what years?If yes: these disciplines have been useful?In what way?The second group was asked if had programming knowledge and if so was asked to explain this knowledge.In the second survey were asked: a) some of the personal information of the first investigation.b) Rate 1 (nothing) to 5 (very) "In the future I see myself as a computer programmer."C) Rate 1 (nothing) to 5 (very) "My difficulty is in understanding the problems," "My difficulty is writing the steps of Top-Down" and "My difficulty is decorating the organization of the algorithm".D) Assuming that took 25 hours of Course, how many hours did study outside the classroom?Selfevaluate ([0, 4[, [4, 8[, [8, 12[, [12, 16[and [16, 20]: Read and write variables, If-Then-Else, Cycles.

CHARACTERIZATION OF THE TWO GROUPS 3.1 First Group
The first group consisted of 16 students of a university course with an average age of 20.125 years (1 33, 1 23, 2 21, 2 20, 4 19 and 6 18 years), 4 female and 12 male.50% of students said they never had any IT discipline in secondary education, and the other 50% said they had computer applications in 12th grade and only one said he was from technical and vocational education.

Second Group
The second group consisted of 37 students from three courses for unemployed people with an average age of 32 years (2 over 50s, 4 aged 40 and 50, 14 between 30 and 40 and 17 students aged 22 to 29). 13 students were female and 24 male.29.72% have the 12th year as qualification, 59.46% 1st cycle and 10.81% have a Master degree.21% had studied in the IT area, and the remaining belonged to areas as diverse as Architecture (8.1%), Design (18.91%), other Engineering (18.91%), but also Law, History, Journalism, Psychology and others.48.65% have said to have computer skills: HTML, basic, Fortran, css, JavaScript, php, Basic, VB.NET, VBScript, C #, C, JavaScript, Java, ActionScript, Lisp, C ++, assembly, Pascal, ActionScript .

Comparison between groups
While the average age of the first group stood at 20.125 years (with only 6.25% over the age of 30 years), in the second group the average age stood at 32 years (and 54% more than 30 years).In the first group there were 25% women, the second group had 35%.The possession of technology, it is seen that the first group has more advanced mobile technologies, as well as devices for gaming.
There is no significant difference in the use of MsWord, MsExcel and MsPowerPoint for both groups.

Table 1 .
Comparison between the two groups regarding age.

Table 2 .
Comparison between the two groups regarding gender.

Table 3 .
Comparison between the two groups regarding taste and interest for technology, dexterity and motivation.

Table 4 .
Comparison between the two groups regarding registration on some sitesAs for the use of applications, responses differed greatly between the two groups: the first group all had Facebook account while in the second group did not have 6.25%; 75% of the first group had Instagram while in the second only 27.03%, 81.25% and 2.7% respectively in Snapchat, 62.5% and 24.32% on Twitter, 12.5% and 67, 57% by LinkedIn.This is justified by the average age being higher in the second group, consisting of job seekers.

Table 5 .
Comparison between the two groups as the usual use of the Internet.

Table 6 .
Comparison between the two groups regarding the possession of computer equipment.

Table 7 .
Comparison between the two groups regarding MsWord.

Table 8 .
Comparison between the two groups regarding MsExcel.

Table 9 .
Comparison between the two groups regarding MsPowerPoint.