In 1999 the School of Computer Science at The University of Witwatersrand (Wits) revised its curriculum to address a number of problems [2]. One of the problems was the increasing gap between students with regard to their prior programming experience. Many of our students, who attend the wealthier schools---formerly schools catering for white scholars---study Computer Studies at High School and come to university as quite experienced Pascal programmers. Other students---typically black students from the poorer areas---have no programming experience. While the emphasis of our first year course is not on programming, we do use a programming language as a vehicle to illustrate concepts, so students must acquire some programming skill during the course. This means that many of our students need to master programming as well as coming to terms with other parts of the course.
['Sarah Rauchas', 'Ian D. Sanders', 'Benjamin Kumwenda']
The effect of prior programming experience in a scheme-based breadth-first curriculum at wits