Building motivation by student-teaching

The structure and content of an Electrical Engineering (EE) First-Year interactive student learning aid for Java has been generated by EE Third-Year students doing a software engineering module at the British University in Egypt Third-Year students expressed their initial "hatred" for Java programming due to their own >50% failure-rates when they first took this "Introduction to Java" programming course. These students took an initial survey of First-Year students that confirmed student antipathy and lack of understanding. A Third-year student-generated interactive Java course was designed using AppInventor to help First-Year students create and build Java Applications for their own mobile telephones. These students could determine their own learning outcomes by responding to a computer-automated quiz. A exit survey of both sets of students showed the success in creating an enthusiasm for programming once the reason for its study had been demonstrated. This student-centered responsibility for learning-by-teaching-successors motivates students as well as being a cost-effective lecturing methodology.