Multi-disciplinary programming exercises

Courses in computer science, data processing or other areas that involve the learning of computer programming often require the student to complete programming exercises. These exercises give the students practice in translating some process into a set of computer commands that accomplish the same process. Very often the exercises are relatively “content free” (write a program to add a set of numbers...) and the objectives attained by the exercises are entirely in the data processing, computer science domain. This paper is based on the assumption that the content of typical programming exercises is an unutilized resource that can be used to facilitate learning in other subject matter areas without jeopardizing the attainment of the programming goals.