Is prior knowledge necessary for undergraduate computing courses? A study of courses offered by Mauritian universities

Research Paper from the year 2016 in the subject Computer Science - Didactics, , language: English, abstract: Prior computing knowledge is not a pre-requisite for enrolling in many computing undergraduate courses at many universities. It is said that the difficulty of learning computer programming lies only with the logical thinking of the student, not because they did not have prior computing knowledge. Universities all around the world are putting tremendous effort to encourage and support students to acquire basic computing skills and computer programming skills. Therefore in this paper, an analysis of all undergraduate computing courses offered in 2015 by two main Mauritian universities, the University of Technology (UTM) and University of Mauritius (UOM) is carried out. This analysis includes two phases: the first one allows us to identify all computing courses which do not require prior computing knowledge at A-Level to enroll in these courses. The second phase will help us to identify the computing courses which are teaching computer programming. From the two analysis we will be able to understand the number of computing courses not requiring computing at A level but will give non -computing A-level students the chance to learn computer programming at tertiary level.