How Should I Teach a Basic Programming Course?

riverman writes "I have been 'provisioned' at the school where I work to teach a new Computer Science/Programming course. I'm supposed to be teaching everything from the very-very basics (i.e. where that myspace thing is in your computer monitor, and how it knows who your friends are) to the easy-advanced (i.e. PHP classes and Python/Google App Engine). I'm an experienced programmer, but I'm not sure where to start — I could easily assume that my students know something basic they don't. Are there any resources on the internet that could help me find a solid curriculum? What are your suggestions?" I'm sure many of us have gone through intro-level programming courses of some sort; what are some things your teacher or professor did that worked well, and what didn't work at all?

Comments

Teach them fun...

[SerpentMage]

1) Teach them to understand that a computer does what a computer is told. So as a class building exercise get them to "program" a robot in pseudo code. You give them a fairly complex assignment that involves decisions. The test in this is that you the teacher are the robot. And the students who thought of this as a joke or simple assignment will quickly realize that garbage in garbage out means something.

2) Do the assignment again, but this time add "testing" routines. Make them write little assignments, that are assembled into bigger tasks. Show how this could be a "test driven" environment. You teach the robot little things, and then those things are assembled into bigger things. This teaches them components, modules and test driven.

3) Take all of that knowledge and apply it to a programming language. I personally would choose something along the lines of python and ruby. They have enough problems and they need a quick turn around.

4) Teach them about OO by introducing them to a programming language like C# or Java.

5) Finally teach them functional

Though I would stress team exercises thus giving them the benefit of XP (Extreme Programming) type training.

Re:Teach them fun...

[xenocide2]

Computer Science Unplugged is a curriculum out there designed to teach students computing principles, and they recommend a game like that. The game works like this: one person is playing the role of "programmer" and the rest of the class will try to follow their instructions. The goal is to duplicate a drawing that only the programmer can see.

The first game(s) the rules are easy -- the "computer" can ask questions and the class can see what the machine is doing. Then you introduce restrictions. The computer player will be restricted from speaking, for example. At the end you have the programmer obscured from the class, only able to speak to their classmates to describe a picture. As programmers we rarely get the "full picture" so to speak, and have to give precise instructions that both we and the computer understand identically.

The most important challenge to this as a teacher is selecting appropriate examples. They have a few, but I'd also add: a formula, with exponents, parenthesis, variables and subscripts. A pixel art smilely face ala CSS testing. A curve. A full binary tree with 4 levels. A small section of text, with bold, underline, paragraphs and bulletpoints. These are harder, but high school students can do it and it illustrates both rendering techniques and the need for language. For highschool students, I'd suggest spending a class on this, and then asking them to either write a paper (1 page tops) on the significance, or if the class is fast and small enough, hold a discussion.

How about a non-programming example?

[VikingBerserker]

When I first learned to program, I remember the teacher asking us how we got to school that day, in as minute details as possible. Example: awaken, open eyes, elevate torso, rotate 90 degrees, bend legs until they reach the floor, stand, walk to bathroom, etc.

From there, you can explain the concepts of procedures to compartmentalize the code. Brushing your teeth may take thousands of steps, yet cut down dramatically with looping, etc.

While it starts out as a new way of looking at how computers process the steps in a more methodical sense than we do, it soon becomes a way to introduce functions, procedures, and other syntax in a practical sense.

The Camel has Two Humps

[eddy]

As a starting point, I suggest this (draft) paper, because it's interesting, and short, flippant, and gets you thinking. The Camel has Two Humps

Learning to program is notoriously difficult. A substantial minority of students fails in every introductory programming course in every UK university. Despite heroic academic effort, the proportion has increased rather than decreased over the years. Despite a great deal of research into teaching methods and student responses, we have no idea of the cause.

It has long been suspected that some people have a natural aptitude for programming, but until now there has been no psychological test which could detect it. Programming ability is not known to be correlated with age, with sex, or with educational attainment; nor has it been found to be correlated with any of the aptitudes measured in conventional intelligence or problem-solving-ability tests.

We have found a test for programming aptitude, of which we give details. We can predict success or failure even before students have had any contact with any programming language with very high accuracy, and by testing with the same instrument after a few weeks of exposure, with extreme accuracy. We present experimental evidence to support our claim. We point out that programming teaching is useless for those who are bound to fail and pointless for those who are certain to succeed.

Re:Task based learning

[Vindication]

I'm a high school student who has previously taken AP-A Computer Science and is currently taking AB CS (this is the last year they're offering it, I believe), and I have never been more dissatisfied with any teacher that I have ever had.

Programming is an outside interest for me; while we do Java in class, I experiment around with C, C++ and Python outside of school (and I am planning on trying to pick up PHP and Perl soon). I've found that many of my classmates, including friends who I know are quite competent with computers in general, are quite lost when trying to learn or apply many of the concepts we use in CS.This is understandable. However, my teacher has inexplicably continued to introduce many of these abstract concepts at the same time, without really explaining even the basic purpose and logic behind each one. As a result, I've seen many people new to CS but genuinely interested in it just give up, because it made little sense to them. Personally, I know someone who is quite talented with C, and it is thanks to his help that I can understand basic C concepts (memory management, etc.) and not be overwhelmed. This friend of mine, I believe, is quite a good teacher, and this is largely due to the fact that he a) does not assume that I know things incredibly well and b) utilizes the Socratic method to great effect.

I agree with the parent's comment. Our current project in AB CS is to write a program that sorts an array using several different algorithms. It is supposed to help us understand Big O notation and the logic behind writing more efficient algorithms, but the teacher hasn't said a single word about Big O, instead opting to hand out papers (which my friends have told me they don't understand at all). The concept of Big O notation seems to be too abstract without practical examples.

Encourage asking questions...you'd be surprised at how many people are afraid of asking questions because they feel they will sound stupid (at least in high school).

Pseudocode is a necessity for some of the assignments we have, and yet many of my friends fail to see the point (they just see it as a waste of time). Make sure to emphasize its importance, because they will feel that they do not need it early on.

Also, make sure to emphasize the importance of debugging your own code early and often. Since my "teacher" does not actually teach, I often end up having to help out my friends who are absolutely stuck, only to find that they had a small debugging issue that they could not find because the teacher never bothered explaining the necessity of debugging.

I don't claim to be an expert in CS or teaching whatsoever, so take this response with a grain of salt. However, I do like to think that my experiences in these courses lend at least some credibility to my reply.

Re:You need to narrow the scope

[Alex Belits]

At first I thought to ridicule your notion that rank beginners should be taught software engineering theory.

BAD software engineering theory, to boot.

Just imagine test-driven aerospace engineering. Test-driven civil engineering. Test-driven economics (okay, I take it back, that's Libertarian idea of letting everyone build "free market" by trial and error and not get wiped out or enslaved in the process). Test-driven medicine. All those area use massive amount of experiments, observation and verification, yet none would find it acceptable to abandon theory, rig up some testing contraption that may or may not be mis-designed and buggy by itself, then do job half-assedly and introduce random changes until tests pass. Or at least this is how "test-driven development" is usually implemented.

I know one area where test-driven development worked extremey well -- biological evolution. Enjoy your ten million years long development cycles. And cancer. I mean, in products of such development.

watch how others do it ?

[Lennie]

Maybe now that you are in teaching, maybe you should have a look how others do it, here is an example:

http://groups.csail.mit.edu/mac/classes/6.001/abelson-sussman-lectures/

I've been watching these for a while now, I liked them (although to much beginner for me, it's a nice way to get to know a 'new' language).

Re:Task based learning

[Blakey Rat]

I'm not ignorance of basic math, I'm ignorance of calculus. And I'm not proud (or ashamed, really) of it at all.

Look, here's the reason I posted that: I was part of a CS program at a university that required calculus. I failed calculus more than once (go ahead, make fun of me), and as a result I ended up dropping out of the program and feeling terrible for years. I'd go as far as saying it wasted years of my life working a dead-end support job.

Imagine how I felt after learning that, hey, calculus is actually mostly useless for the vast majority of software development jobs. Universities are losing students by making pointless requirements that have nothing to do with the field the students are studying, and I think that should stop. That's all.