The final section discusses some of the advantages of the laptop studio model and changes that will be made in future offerings of the Algorithms and Programming course. The Algorithms and Programming course is taken by first-term freshmen IT majors. Its goal is to teach basic algorithmic design and programming skills. However, students do not learn to design and implement their own classes. This is left for the second course.
Students do use objects created by others.
A typical class began with a 45-minute lecture to introduce a new topic. This was followed by a series of exercises done in small groups of four students each. These exercises were intended to take the remaining 65 minutes of class. As an example, one studio class was devoted to introducing the concept of iteration. The lecture motivates the need for iteration, shows the syntax for expressing iterations, and provides several examples of using iteration.