Teaching Novices Programming and Important Applications in a Single Semester - Critical Factors from Zero to Portable GUI Programming in Four Hours

At the Vienna University of Economics and Business Administration (WU), Bachelor students can learn programming from scratch and become able to create portable GUI programs for Windows, macOS, and Linux in just one semester. This is possible within 60 hours (4 hours per week) of class attendance (“contact hours”) and a total teaching load of 200 hours, which corresponds to 8 ECTS (European Credit Transfer System). Several critical success factors make this possible, including the course objectives, structure, organization, applied pedagogical principles, and the programming language used for teaching the introductory course [1].