Introduction to Programming Using Mobile Phones and MIT App Inventor

At the beginning of each year, we ask our new undergraduate students in Computer Engineering if they have ever developed a computer program. Surprisingly, the most frequent answer is no. The few students who have attended a Computer Science training module usually have some basic programming notions; however, most of our students coming straight from high school have never programmed. This lack of basic programming skills represents a major drawback when taking programming-related courses. This is especially true for the course on Computer Organization, taught during the first semester of the first year, as one of its main objectives is to explain the processor architecture, and therefore a great part of it revolves around programming in assembly language. To tackle this lack of basic programming skills, a workshop on mobile application programming using MIT App Inventor is offered to freshmen. This workshop is highly welcomed and positively received by the students, and we believe that it has contributed to improving their performance on courses related to programming and, in particular, on the Computer Organization course.