Published: 8th December 2013 DOI: 10.4204/EPTCS.136 ISSN: 2075-2180 |
Preface | |
From Principles to Practice with Class in the First Year Sam Tobin-Hochstadt and David Van Horn | 1 |
Structural Induction Principles for Functional Programmers James Caldwell | 16 |
The Second International Workshop on Trends in Functional Programming in Education, TFPIE 2013, was held on May 13, 2013 at Brigham Young University in Provo, Utah, USA. It was co-located with TFP 2013, the Fourteenth Symposium on Trends in Functional Programming. The goal of TFPIE is to gather researchers, professors, teachers, and all professionals interested in functional programming in education. This includes the teaching of functional programming, but also the application of functional programming as a tool for teaching other topics, e.g. computational concepts, complexity, logic and reasoning, and even disciplines, e.g. philosophy or music. TFPIE is the heir of previous events, like Functional and Declarative Programming in Education (FDPE), to which it owes a great deal and from which it has borrowed experience and ideas. It diverges from these previous events in a significant way by fostering a spirit of frank and open discussion in a manner that differs from the modus operandi used by most annual events. With its post-workshop review process, it allows authors to improve their manuscripts by incorporating the feedback they receive during discussions at the workshop. In addition, this model allows for material that may not yet be publication-ripe to be discussed in a congenial environment. In short, TFPIE aims to offer those with novel ideas, work-in-progress and class-room tested ideas a forum for discussion. This publication model has worked well for the previous edition of TFPIE and we expect it to be a hallmark of success for future editions, as it has been for sister events like aforementioned TFP and Implementation and Application of Functional Languages (IFL).
TFPIE 2013 received 6 submissions and had 17 participants. All submissions were found to be sound and in scope by the PC Chair and invited to give a presentation. There was one late cancellation, so including the invited talk by Matthew Flatt on the creation of student programming languages, the workshop comprised 6 presentations and a fruitful plenary discussion. The post-workshop review process received 6 submissions, which were vetted by the program committee, assuming scientific journal standards of publication. The 2 articles in this volume were selected for publication as the result of this process. Tobin-Hochstadt and Van Horn report on their solution to the difficult transition between the first semester course in functional programming (using languages, programming environment, etc. intended for teaching) to the second semester course in object-oriented programming (with a production-oriented language, environment, etc.). Finding that this confusing circumstance made the key concepts hard to grasp for students, the authors present and evaluate a new introduction to the second semester course, based on the environment and languages the students used before, that focusses on key object-oriented concepts. Caldwell lays out an education narrative that focusses on reasoning about programs, using structural induction principles. He argues that more such formal reasoning should get more emphasis in programming education and demonstrates the feasibility thereof by reporting on his experiences using this narrative in the functional programming course at the University of Wyoming.
TFPIE 2013 certainly was a success and could not have take place without the seamless and very hospitable local organization by Jay McCarthy and the TFP 2013 organizing committee. Of course, a workshop is nothing without the submitting and presenting authors, the program committee and all participants. As PC Chair, I would like to extend my gratitude to all of these people and I'm quite confident I do so for everyone in attendance. In continued support of the community of people interested in advancing education using functional programming, all of this year's event's resources have been made available on the TFPIE wiki page.
Philip K.F. Hölzenspies | |
Program Committee Chair |
Peter Achten1 | Radboud Universiteit Nijmegen |
Edwin Brady | University of St. Andrews |
Marc Feeley | Université de Montréal |
Matthew Flatt | University of Utah |
Philip K.F. Hölzenspies2 | Universiteit Twente |
Gabriele Keller | University of New South Wales |
Jan Kuper | Universiteit Twente |
Marco T. Morazán1 | Seton Hall University |
Stephanie Weirich | University of Pennsylvania |
Viktória Zsók | Eötvös Loránd University |
1) General co-chair | |
2) Program committee chair |