Teaching mobile apps for Windows devices using TouchDevelop

Even in a computer science degree, some students find it very hard to learn programming. In a less programming oriented degree such as information technology the problem is amplified, and it is a real struggle to engage some students with the programming courses. A wealth of literature describes various approaches to teaching programming in the hope of addressing the perennial learning problems and encouraging the students to engage with the material. One approach to engagement is to teach the most current material, and one form of material that is highly current is programming apps for mobile devices. In this work, we report on one approach using a new programming language that was specifically designed for mobile app development. The approach was a success, with students becoming engaged. However, there are issues which we hope to address in the future.