Teaching Introductory Programming to Information Systems and Computing Majors: Is There a Difference?

This paper reports on a pilot study that attempts to determine if there are differences between students majoring in Computing and those majoring in Information Systems (IS) enrolled in the same introductory computer programming course. Data is gathered on age, gender, opinion of computer programming, topics of difficulty, difficulty level in computer programming, and how students structure computer programming concepts. Given the small sample size in the pilot study, the results suggested only slight differences between the two groups of students. It also showed that there were some topics within the course that IS students faced difficulties in. Some suggestions for future research are provided.