I'm over-thinking just about every aspect of building this course, and all I can do is hope that it doesn't show once the rubber hits the road.
The trouble with all of this, is that, as a first course ever, I volunteered to teach a first year course in the fall instead of starting with a much easier third year course, CSE-323. Don't get me wrong, the material in either course is really straightforward, the former is introduction to computer programming, and the latter is formal languages and automata.
For a computer scientist, those two courses are pretty much "bread and butter" courses; if you can't teach either of them because of a lack of understanding, you may as well hang up your hat and go home.
No, the problem, is that fall term first years at RMC have to undergo a unique experience known as recruit orientation camp. At least, that's what it was called when I did it. The name changed twice during the four years that I was an undergrad at RMC.
In any case, recruit orientation camp leads to first years who are so incredibly tired, that they will, quite literally, fall asleep while standing. So the question is, how do I build a course for a bunch of engineers (75% of whom are likely to think -- quite mistakenly -- that the skill of programming is a skill they will never use after this term) that will assuredly have concentration (and attention) issues for the first few weeks of the course?
I think I've solved that question, simply by deciding that my teaching slides will be quite... verbose... for the first few weeks. They'll be more like study guides than tools used solely for the illustration of concepts. Which is a bit of a bummer - I feel like I'm contributing to the "memorize this" credo of first year university, rather than the "understand this" credo that I'd much rather promote.
The other issue (and one that I'll admit I'm struggling with) is the question of:
How can I make the programming assignments both interesting and challenging ... or... at very least, how can I make them interesting? Especially to people who aren't immediately fascinated by a good programming challenge.
I wonder ... when these challenges associated with teaching are no longer present while preparing a new class, does that mean one should likely think about a career change?
