Using Active Learning to Increase Student Retention in Introductory Computing Courses

Abstract

Bruce Herring is a lecturer in the Rochester Institute of Technology's Department of Software Engineering. He holds a MS in Computer Science from Florida State University. At RIT he teaches several introductory courses to incoming freshmen and sophomores in computer science and software engineering. Prior to RIT he worked in industry for 16 years for Harris Corporation, a communications company. His work was predominantly in an embedded environment dealing with the interactions between software and hardware. He has worked to integrate his extensive industry experience into the classroom to provide students with a fuller understanding of how concepts are applied after they leave the university environment.