Reaching the 'aha!' moment: web development as a motivator for recursion

Abstract

One of the topics within programming that has remained a challenge for both educators and students is recursion. We present an approach to teaching recursion that has the potential to increase the motivation of students to master recursion. The approach is novel in its focus on file system and web search, problems that are directly relevant to all computing students and particularly of interest for those in the area of information technology. Participants in the workshop should bring a laptop with the latest version of Python installed to follow along with the examples discussed.