Addressing the Double Challenge of Learning and Teaching Enterprise Technologies through Peer Teaching

Students face difficulties when transitioning from introductory programming to using more complex enterprise technologies, such as libraries, software frameworks and development kits. Whilst much literature has been devoted to how to teach introductory programming effectively, less attention is devoted towards managing the transition towards more complex technologies. This work presents the design, experience and evaluation of a module that engages students with a range of enterprise technologies. The module uses peer teaching to transfer the responsibility to students for teaching each other about the technologies. As such, this reduces the need for the teacher to invest time in preparing materials, and it is feasible to cover more technologies depending upon the number of teaching teams. The evaluation, conducted on a cohort of 34 students studying six enterprise technologies over the course of one week, revealed overwhelmingly positive experiences with this approach. For the teacher, effort for preparation and delivery was minimal, and the feedback on the module was highly positive.