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What We've Learned About Teaching Code

codecademy.com

21–30 of 45 posts

Re: What We've Learned About Teaching Code

#21
post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's obvious, and they should have known. In my experience the best people to educate the newbies are the people who were newbies a year ago. They know what the roadblocks were for them, and the don't know 'too much' as to complicate things.

It's funny because education is actually is backwards here. You're supposed to want to be taught by an expert in the field.

A local maximum will come from those who recently acquired the knowledge. But truly great teachers, that can consistently reach students of diverse aptitudes and thinking styles, are made over the course of decades.

Re: What We've Learned About Teaching Code

#22
post #19
post #13

Since I know the codecademy team is always listening, I'll share my feedback through supporting my two friends through codecademy: Firstly they love it. The game mechanics and the reward cycle is a great motivation for them. I think nobody can argue that you've found a great way to get TONS of people to enjoy "learning to program". The second part is a bit tricky... are they really learning to program? IMO the proble…

That's not the worst thing in the world, since most pedagogy that works is of the basic format "You should know X. What should you know? Class repeats X. Good, because you should know X. Timmy, if I say Y, what do you say? Timmy repeats X. Good job Timmy, because you should know X. Susan, if I say Y, what do you say? Susan repeats X. Good job Susan, because you should know X. You should also know that if Y', X'. What…

Essentially you are saying something is better than nothing.

I wholeheartedly agree.

As a person whose purpose in life is more and more "Free information in order to Free Education", all I'm saying is I think we can do better; a lot better.

Rote memorization certainly works. But I don't think anyone anywhere, has ever proved that it's an efficient or even particular good way to learn something. And yet modern civilization takes this for granted.

p.s. I never went to college so this is all outside-in.

Re: What We've Learned About Teaching Code

#23
post #6

I've had a couple dozen students working through many of the CodeCademy programs this semester as an experiment. And most of the Javascript lessons currently on the site are just barely above mediocre.

Hi teach - would love to hear your feedback after working through it for a semester. Feel free to shoot us an email!

Re: What We've Learned About Teaching Code

#24
I am a student at codeacademy, I am 41 years old and I have had always the urge to learn programming, I have tried many online tutorials in different programming languages and @ first it is exciting but later on it gets fustrating and finally I get lost, codecademy has given me hope again that i dont have a disability in programming, yes I get stuck and I have to do the exercises 3 or 4 times until I grasp.the concept, but I can feel my progress and I am allways excited to take the lessons every day

Re: What We've Learned About Teaching Code

#25
post #13

Since I know the codecademy team is always listening, I'll share my feedback through supporting my two friends through codecademy: Firstly they love it. The game mechanics and the reward cycle is a great motivation for them. I think nobody can argue that you've found a great way to get TONS of people to enjoy "learning to program". The second part is a bit tricky... are they really learning to program? IMO the proble…

Thanks for this nuanced and thoughtful feedback.

Our tool is a new way to present information, and the course creator community is figuring out how best to take advantage of the format. You wouldn't write documentation in the same way that you present to a crowd of 2,000 people, and you won't write a Codecademy lesson the same way you write a textbook. It will take some time to use the platform to its full advantage.

I'm excited to see what innovative courses the community comes up with, and I would love to hear your suggestions about the product or curriculum. Feel free to reach out directly at sasha at codecademy dot com.

Re: What We've Learned About Teaching Code

#26
post #13

Since I know the codecademy team is always listening, I'll share my feedback through supporting my two friends through codecademy: Firstly they love it. The game mechanics and the reward cycle is a great motivation for them. I think nobody can argue that you've found a great way to get TONS of people to enjoy "learning to program". The second part is a bit tricky... are they really learning to program? IMO the proble…

I consider myself an "average" person teaching himself to code and the first thing I did was make a commitment to aggressively imbue the activity into my lifestyle for the 'I need to learn to think like a programmer" reasons you mentioned. I don't believe you can truly "learn" this stuff any other way. It needs to become habitual and the easiest way is to absorb it into your day to day existence regardless of how irritating or slow it may seem for the first...three years

Re: What We've Learned About Teaching Code

#27
In college, I listened to some advice about choosing less experienced instructors because they have more recently been through the same material that they are teaching. Plus, they'd be more motivated and less jaded. Turns out that the experience factor is not that important.

At this point, after having many mediocre teachers and very few good ones, I've come to the conclusion that only a small percentage of "teachers" are actually worth learning from.

The only good teachers I've had were meticulous about their knowledge AND really loved teaching. Not one or the other.

It basically requires a full-time teacher. Anyone besides that is actually worse for me than no teacher because they are apt to ruin my interest in the subject. Maybe I'm spoiled, but most classes aren't much better than a textbook and a chat with a good friend.

Who does that leave as worthwhile teachers? Rare people like Feynman, a couple of instructors on Lynda.com, one or two from my undergraduate classes, and a couple from the new array of online classes. Again, you can be a grad student and be a great teacher, but you have to know your domain inside and out, and love teaching it. That means fielding questions with ease and, probably, being able to teach without notes if needed.

One of the reasons I like open online courses is that you get to experiment until you find an experienced professor who had enough initiative to start an online course in the first place. I really do mourn the downfall of the in-person class setting, but at least in my experience, a vast majority of them aren't what they're cracked up to be. Maybe at top 10 schools the situation changes?

Re: What We've Learned About Teaching Code

#28
I'm going strong on codecademy. It's great to have a structured approach to learning. There are so many resources out there that it's difficult to even begin to learn coding. I don't expect that this will ultimately teach me to build products with code but it at least will introduce me to common/core languages and provide a base to continue my studies through other means.

Right now I'm working through the classes nightly. 15 badges down...no clue how many to go.

Re: What We've Learned About Teaching Code

#29
post #22
post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's not the worst thing in the world, since most pedagogy that works is of the basic format "You should know X. What should you know? Class repeats X. Good, because you should know X. Timmy, if I say Y, what do you say? Timmy repeats X. Good job Timmy, because you should know X. Susan, if I say Y, what do you say? Susan repeats X. Good job Susan, because you should know X. You should also know that if Y', X'. What…

Essentially you are saying something is better than nothing . I wholeheartedly agree. As a person whose purpose in life is more and more "Free information in order to Free Education", all I'm saying is I think we can do better; a lot better. Rote memorization certainly works. But I don't think anyone anywhere, has ever proved that it's an efficient or even particular good way to learn something. And yet modern civili…

At the risk of being pedantic, it's worth noting that some things benefit from memorisation (e.g. the alphabet) and some things benefit from "higher" learning (e.g. understanding the concepts of programming). I don't think patio11 is necessarily saying "something is better than nothing"; sometimes it is _better_ to teach someone 'if you see the shape O, you say "oh"'.

Re: What We've Learned About Teaching Code

#30
post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Excellent point. Not only that, but analogies always come along with extra bits that may lead them down the wrong path. It's very tricky to find just the right metaphor.

Richard Feynman answering the question "How do magnets work" in an informal pick-your-brain type interview: "I can't explain that attraction in terms of anything else that's familiar to you. For example, if we said the magnets attract like rubber bands, I would be cheating you. Because they're not connected by rubber bands. I'd soon be in trouble. And secondly, if you were curious enough, you'd ask me why rubber band…

From the 1983 BBC "Fun to Imagine" series. Video for reference: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wMFPe-DwULM
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