Student perceptions of the educational experiences that are provided to them at tertiary institutions do not necessarily match the perceptions of the academics who provide these educational experiences. Mismatches between student perceptions and academic perceptions can adversely affect student learning as well as lead to mutually frustrating encounters between students and academics. This paper presents a selection of nine true teaching tales. Each of the tales recounts an experience which allowed the author to perceive a situation from the student point of view. The paper then discusses the importance of student perceptions in computing courses.

Applets are little applications. Proglets are little programs. The author advocates the use of proglets in firstyear programming courses to encourage students to investigate aspects of the language being taught, to test (parts of) algorithms, and to have fun. The writing of proglets allows beginning students to concentrate on their current concerns without being overwhelmed by the requirement to write assignment quality programs worthy of a fully-trained software engineer. The author has used proglets during three semesters to help students in repeat offerings of first-year programming courses which used Java as the teaching language.

Some universities are concerned about low levels of female enrolment in their computer science courses. This paper takes a humorous approach to this serious problem. The paper examines some of the barriers to female participation in computer science courses, especially in courses which involve programming. The paper then makes some suggestions for increasing female participation in computer science courses.

Computer programming courses at university usually require students to undertake assignments which involve the submission of a working program by a particular date. Each semester, for a variety of reasons, some students fail these programming assignments. This paper uses humour to illuminate some of the unsuccessful approaches to programming assignments taken by some of the computing students whom the author has taught.

Students who are new to tertiary study may be confused about the way things are done at university. Students who fared well at secondary school by doing what they were told, and students who view education as a process of collecting the correct answers, are particularly prone to being disoriented by first year programming courses. This paper uses humour, in the form of fake letters to a mythical agony aunt, to inform students without admonishing them for their lack of understanding.