A teamwork-based approach to programming fundamentals with scheme, smalltalk & java

In October 2004 the University of Lugano in southern Switzerland established a new faculty of informatics. Its founding principles are innovation in teaching and faculty participation in the research community. With respect to teaching, students spend mornings attending lectures and afternoons in an Atelier designed to support interaction both among students and with the instructors. In teaching the first year "Programming Fundamentals" courses, we took advantage of the clean slate nature of the faculty to introduce innovative teaching elements. The novel aspects include our use of Scheme, Smalltalk, and Java, our combination of individual, pair and group projects and the integration of expert lectures to introduce useful, but slightly orthogonal elements at key points in the semester. Our very positive experience is reported along with a discussion of aspects to improve in the future.