Abstract:

The so called Bologna Agreement has brought about the Higher Education European Space, and among other changes, this means that many university studies in Spain have been reduced from five to four years. This twenty per cent loss in the time devoted to the education of future engineering professionals means that theoretical contents and activities of all courses have to be carefully selected, and only the most important topics should be kept. Time spent in computer labs and programming assignments should be carefully measured, because time flies in front of a computer screen, and sometimes the efficiency of learning during computer lab sessions can be clearly improved.
In this paper, a simple but powerful programming environment is described, in which syntax complexities and development environment options are kept to a minimum, and quick tests of algorithmic ideas can be readily expressed in programming code. The use of this environment is also described in various contexts, and it is shown that important geometrical concepts can be explored with just a few lines of code. This approach allows the students to concentrate on the concepts and ideas of the course, and spend less time dealing with the learning curve of the syntax of the programming language and the subtleties of the programming environment.

Keywords:

Programming language, interactive development environment, learning efficiency.