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

You need to narrow the scope

[Anonymous Coward]

Computer basics, ie how to use the web, and computer programming do not belong in the same course. People in the audience for either will not be happy with the other.

Re:You need to narrow the scope

[Anonymous Coward]

What grade level is this on? If it's a semester long high school course, or middle school, you should get up with an experienced teacher. Even if you're teaching this at a junior/university college, you should find a licensed educator to talk to. Too often computer science teachers know a bit about programming and logic, but very little about teaching. I'ld recommend covering your major points, and focus on a very VERY simplistic program that handles a few basic aspects (Perhaps a simple calculator?) and progress through whatever technologies are necessary while stressing that programming languages are like human languages, except machine friendly. Some languages are more flowery (latin) some are more coarse (germanic) and some are very powerfully in their succinctness (some asiatics).. Finding a way to bring this out of nerd land helps normal kids not want to get you fired as badly.

1) teach background
2) teach theory
3) relate theory to something understandable
4) expound. Verify learning, and repeat. And repeat. and repeat. then move on seems to work. Half the kids are not paying attention at any given time in virtually any class.

Task based learning

[nurb432]

Don't teach things in 'the abstract'. Give them a task to accomplish that needs particular 'features'.

Then the next 'task' adds more 'features', but doesn't drop the earlier ones learned.

And don't make the tasks abstract either. "do a bubble sort" would qualify as too abstract. While "collect 5 client names from the user and sort them" wouldn't.

Re:Task based learning

[introspekt.i]

Second that motion. I teach labs for an introductory programming class myself. The best way to get concepts to stick with students is to present them as pertinent problems or tasks to the students. Some examples that work for me are making small games (card games, dice games, etc) and writing programs that perform some kind of pertinent calculation (like business calculations or health BMI, target heart rate) calculations. All of these can be encapsulated in the task of presenting the program to the user in a nice interface..be it command line, web, or desktop GUI.

These examples don't cover everything, but what you do should work for you, your students, and the concept that needs to be transferred to the students.

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:Task based learning

[hedronist]

I agree, go concrete. It's easy to forget that almost everything about a computer is abstract to a rank beginner. One thing I have seen students get hung up on is:

x = x + 1

It looks like an equality statement that couldn't possibly be correct. Just telling them it's "an assignment statement" doesn't seem to penetrate. I have found a mailbox analogy to work about 95% of the time.

It goes like this: You are at the post office in front of a wall of mailboxes. The mailboxes have numbers on them (you could go into memory addressing if it was appropriate, but it's probably best to leave that out unless someone asks for a little more detail). One of the boxes has a label on it: 'x'. The statement "x = x + 1" means "take the current contents of the box labeled 'x', add '1' to it, then put the result back in the box labeled 'x'"

Often, about 60% of the students immediately go, "Oh. That's pretty straightforward." For the remainder, you could have 4 or 5 cardboard boxes. Write 'x' on a sticky note and put it on a box. Write '1' on a piece of paper ... You get the idea. Seeing this very concrete representation of memory, and that the names are 'labels' on that memory, means that this thing they have been hearing about for years, 'memory', is now nothing but a bunch of boxes you can store stuff in. Simple.

You can elaborate on this by putting multiple labels on the same box, or putting special pieces of paper in some boxes that say 'don't use me, go get/set the value of some other box', thereby demonstrating pointers. You can also demonstrate type mismatches by putting a picture in a box and then ask a student what it means to 'add 1 to a picture'. Etc, etc.

This may sound like baby steps, but in 1/2 hour or less and you have given your students a real, usable model of one of the most fundamental concepts there is.

Re:Task based learning

[bishiraver]

This isn't just for programming. Using pertinent tasks to teach any subject is the best way to get the knowledge to stick.

Re:Task based learning

[Alex Belits]

(Considering I'm almost 30, I program computers for a good living, and I've never used it, I'm thinking: it ain't.)

Considering I'm almost 40, I program computers for a living and have to use it all the time, I am thinking you are a some kind of web developer.

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.

Computer science is hard for most people.

[gillbates]

The majority of people - even those with college degrees - have a difficult time with logic. Something as simple as an if-else construct can be very confusing to the average person at first.

And there's another twist. About 40% of learners can understand and manipulate abstract concepts, and learn them without any practical experience whatsoever. The other 60% require experiential learning - they have to do before they understand. Fortunately, computers can very easily demonstrate concepts such as if-else...

And how computers work is a mystery to most people. Before you start the course, you should come up with a simple mental model that you can use to explain how a computer works to someone with absolutely no understanding of electronics, logic, etc... For a basic programming course, you should first assess class understanding:

1. Do they know how a computer works at a basic level - files, memory, cpu, etc?
2. Do they know the difference between an application, and the files it creates ("I saved it in Word..." etc..)
3. Do they understand how to solve a problem by breaking it down into its constituent steps? Believe me, there are people that really struggle with this, and expect the instructor just to teach them to solve a particular problem, rather than how to instruct a computer to solve problems. In fact, that might be a good introduction to programming, "Computer programming is the art of instructing computers to solve problems."

For most programming courses, you should not even assume your students understand how to use the compiler. Furthermore, you should probably come up with a series of simple examples which demonstrate your point without any extraneous code. Because most people learn by doing, one of the first exercises should be to build a simple "hello world" type of application to familiarize themselves with the build tools.

And have fun! Come up with interesting problems. Your students will most likely spend most of their corporate careers doing boring stuff, so they'll appreciate the chance to do fun things like games.