neitzel@infbs.uucp (Martin Neitzel) (01/14/89)
The CS dept of the Tech. Univ. Braunschweig, FRG, has a project group investigating ``computer assisted education/instruction for CS students''. As a member of this group, I am concerned with the development of environments/simulators/tools that are aimed at undergraduates to teach them their first programming language(s). If you have made any experiences in this area, I want to solicit you to post them to comp.edu. [Is this still the proper newsgroup for this kind of stuff?] Thank You in advance. Martin Here are some typical questions: * How should one teach programming? What tools (computerized or not) would you wish from a kind fairy maiden? * Assuming that your students _have_ to learn how to program in, say, Modula-2: How would you prepare them for this task? Would you introduce some concepts before they get in touch with the actual language? Which ones and How do you do it? * Should they make their first steps into programming in a different language/environment, more suited to introduce basic concepts like ``program text'', ``variable'', ``statement'', ect.? Or would you rather start with Modula-2 from scratch? * How would you value an educational environment for Modula-2, that makes visible what is done internally, e.g. the search of a declaration along scopes, or the creation of a new local data space at procedure invocation? (I'm not talking about a debugger here, and hope you get the idea.) -- Martin Neitzel, Techn. Univ. Braunschweig, W.Germany BITNET/EARN: neitzel@dbsinf6.bitnet (mail via bitnet preferred) UUCP: neitzel@infbs.uucp (unido!infbs!neitzel)
dykimber@phoenix.Princeton.EDU (Daniel Yaron Kimberg) (01/17/89)
In article <1093@infbs.UUCP> neitzel@infbs.UUCP (Martin Neitzel) writes: >Here are some typical questions: >* How should one teach programming? What tools (computerized or not) > would you wish from a kind fairy maiden? I hope you have taken a look at the very substantial literature on teaching students how to program. I think that the right approach to learning, especially in an abstract domain like programming, would be experiential learning. The tools should be designed with this in mind. Not tools to teach, but tools to give students the experiences by which they will learn to program. I could be more concrete, but I'd give you a biased opinion, based on more anecdotal and intuitive information than actual data. -Dan
pjh@mccc.UUCP (Pete Holsberg) (01/20/89)
Dan,
Would you cite some of the literature on "how to teach
programming", please? Thanks,
Pete
--
Pete Holsberg UUCP: {...!rutgers!}princeton!mccc!pjh
Mercer College CompuServe: 70240,334
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Trenton, NJ 08690 Voice: 1-609-586-4800dykimber@phoenix.Princeton.EDU (Daniel Yaron Kimberg) (01/21/89)
In article <576@mccc.UUCP> pjh@mccc.UUCP (Pete Holsberg) writes: >Dan, > Would you cite some of the literature on "how to teach >programming", please? Thanks, Okay. First, a few disclaimers. I haven't done a heck of a lot of reading in this area. I'm much more interested in how computers can be used in education than in how to teach programming. Also, this is going to be off the top of my head, and not in any standard format. Lastly, I'm just a lowly undergrad, I haven't devoted my life to studying education (as of the moment), so I'm probably missing some seriously important refs. That's life. Oh, and also, most of the stuff I've read hasn't had much to do with teaching advanced computer programming concepts. Typical studies involve teaching LISP or Logo to computer novices. Okay, in no particular format or order: o Seymour Papert's "Mindstorms" - not specifically about just teaching computer programming, but that's part of the deal. full of Papert's musings on educational philosophy. not much in the way of legit data, o Roy Pea and Karen Sheingold's "Mirrors of Minds..." - some good papers, i've only read some of them. o Journal of Educational Psychology - occasional articles on teaching computer programming. lots of empirical studies. a good journal to check because it covers a lot of what gets discussed in this group o Journal of Educational Computing Research - hope i got the name right. a pretty new journal, most of the studies are on teaching programming. i can't really vouch for the quality, but the topic is dead on. Okay, well this is random enough. Depending on what you're interested in, there are lots of books and journals out there. There's been lots of work in intelligent tutoring systems for programming, for instance, and plenty of interesting papers on using computers in education not necessarily to teach programming. Hope this doesn't throw you too far off the track. And I hope nobody minds my posting this - last time i tried mailing refs, but i got a lot of requests. -Dan