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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?
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.
"You can't make a race horse of a pig"
"No," said Samuel, "but you can make very fast pig"
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.