References on teaching introductory programming courses As the new semester starts soon, I am interested in research regarding the teaching of introductory programming courses. I would like to improve my university course and I am looking for scientific papers on that topic.

One trend I have seen is that some students (a smaller group) are interested in computers or they have already some programming background. They are fine and learn a lot. But the majority of students struggle at the first step of programming (hard to set up Eclipse, a lot of errors at the beginning, etc.). Is this just my view or is this documented in literature?

I would like to make this 'first step' into programming as easy as possible for students. As a first start I found "A Gentle Introduction to the Art of Object-Oriented Programming in Java"
Here's a survey paper and there are others.

You might want to consider the inverted method also known as outside-in, which differs from the traditional bottom-up approach.

This article on the application of problem-based learning to first year programming reports some successful results, mainly in terms of secondary skills learned by students. The cost is a major investment and restructuring by those involved.