It is summer and time to reflect upon the past school year. Course evaluations are in, and provided some interesting insight into how my students perceived my class. The standard complaint is there. They don’t like the language I use (Racket). But two other recurring themes appeared that will change the way I teach next year.
The first negative came from the weaker students; that I assumed they knew what programming is and that the start of the year went too quickly for them. I have the luxury at my school that all students (high school juniors) must take computer science. The students are all high achieving students, yet computer science is a new subject to the vast majority of them, and many are intimidated at the beginning of the year. So, I intend to slow it down in the fall.
The second complaint came mostly from the more advanced students, but I saw it in many of the evaluations, so it struck a chord. The students complained about my strict requirements for thorough documentation and complete testing of their functions. My usual reaction to this complaint is, “you’ll thank me in ten years when you are out in the work world”, but my reaction this year is that I might be turning some students off to computer science because I am battering them with the not-so-fun aspect of computer science. Since it is the first time many of my students have been exposed to computer science and to programming, I believe I have to focus more on the fun aspects of computer science, that is, the problem solving. It will be a shift for me, but I want my students to end the year thinking, “that was fun, I want more”, rather than, “testing is unbearable, biology is looking good”.
I intend to let them play more, explore, get joy out of seeing their program finally execute and find satisfaction in arriving at a good solution to a given problem. I think I’ll have more fun too! What about you?
Karen Lang
CSTA Board Member
That is great your curriculum makes computer science mandatory-it’s a knowledge and subject important today.
How do you think you’ll try to focus more on the fun aspects of cs instead of boring them with documentation? That’s tough because the other parts are important… maybe not so much for introductory type classes though.
I am also pleased to hear you really look at the evaluations and adapt to them, I was always weary if people did.
Thanks for sharing!
Liz-CoolProducts
Dear Karen,
Thanks for sharing your experience.
Regarding the first complaint: I created a so-called ‘One Minute Paper’ with five questions which I hand out to my students after each lesson and ask them to answer these questions spontaneously (and not necessarily related to the content of the lecture, also on things like breaks, temperature in the room, etc.). The questions are
-What is the most important thing you learned today?
-What do you least understand?
-What did you particularly like?
-What did you not like?
-What do you want for the next lecture events?
With that I have the possibility to react quickly on upcoming complaints. Giving a feedback on the One-Minute-Paper at the beginning of the next lesson is highly appreciated by my students.
This is one part of my ‘continual improvement program’.
Regarding the second complaint:
There are too many students out there who think they are able to develop software by just knowing how to write program code. They have to learn that programming is much more and includes topics like testing, documentation etc. I know that they don’t like it very much, but this shouldn’t lead to reduce the lessons to just writing code.
What about bringing fun also to documentation and testing? What about performing a contest? One team has to build in an error in the program and the other team has to find it. Or: They have to find an error in the documentation. Have some give-aways as prizes, create certificates, etc. Could be worth a try…
Frank