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The Practice is not the Performance: Why project-based learning fails
31–40 of 136 posts
Re: The Practice is not the Performance: Why project-based learning fails
#32I think the author misses one major point: doing lessons and homework is boring. Building real apps and making things is fun and exciting. I started teaching myself Chinese when I was a teenager, and I decided to study it at school. As soon as it turned into a routine with lessons and homework, I lost all interest.
Project-based learning is an awesome way to learn a new framework or language, especially if you already have a lot of experience. I also learn very well from tutorials when I'm a beginner at something. For instance, I followed some Blender tutorials to learn 3D modeling, and I think that's the only way I could learn. The Blender UI is far too complex to just click around and figure things out.
However, there are cases where you really do need to study a book and sit exams. I have many years of experience with AWS, but I'm not an expert and have lots of gaps in my knowledge. I've been thinking about getting an AWS certification, so that I can deeply understand all of their services.
Re: The Practice is not the Performance: Why project-based learning fails
#33In Denmark we have a two universities that almost exclusively do project based learning. Basically students are put in groups and attached a mentor who is responsible for teaching them CS. To this is coupled traditional courses in basic math/algorithms/scientific theory. These lines produce candidates that are wasted supperior to our traditional universities. Well, if you need them to actually work with CS in the rea…
"wasted supperior" Did you mean "way superior" or, better yet, "far superior"?
Re: The Practice is not the Performance: Why project-based learning fails
#34A really core question(/assumption in many comments) is "is a computer science education only for SV job prep?" As usual, we could stand to remember that the world doesn't revolve around us. People learn to program for a lot of other reasons too.
If you want the quickest path to a SV job, you learn the most modern frameworks and drill them until you scrawl the boiler plate in your sleep. Project-based learning is extremely appropriate for this. You absolutely don't need four years of education to crank out a comfortable 6 figure salary off this knowledge. (In fact, it might be a liability if your pet framework ages out). You only have to be able to fill a need (even one will do) which a lot of companies have.
If you're looking for anything else, a diet of only back-to-back projects might not be the best way. If you're jumping head first from javascript into kernel modules you might consider a book. If you're looking to automate some bio or physics lab equipment, you can't expect getting good at a few popular frameworks to carry you. If you're learning math there are advantages to having people grade your work and offer office hours.
And if we're being really honest, this non-project-based stuff is pretty useful as SV job prep too. Not knowing things like linear algebra, statistics, and discrete math can be career limiting. I mean, how many of us are really ready to jump the gap to doing serious ML work?
Re: The Practice is not the Performance: Why project-based learning fails
#35I agree in general with the argument put forward.
However:
While it is true that principles of programming are better taught in environments that are more suited to that (in my days that meant Modula2 and Common Lisp), one should not just assume that those skill acquired can be transferred by students unaided to different contexts. As a TA later I watched in horror how students that did perfectly well in programming classes reverted to the bad habits they had thought themselves in hobby programming before college, once they were asked to do a project in the 'industrial' IDE's an languages they were used to back then.
Our 'learning' is far more contextualized than we believe and transfer is hard, not automatic.
Re: The Practice is not the Performance: Why project-based learning fails
#36In Denmark we have a two universities that almost exclusively do project based learning. Basically students are put in groups and attached a mentor who is responsible for teaching them CS. To this is coupled traditional courses in basic math/algorithms/scientific theory. These lines produce candidates that are wasted supperior to our traditional universities. Well, if you need them to actually work with CS in the rea…
"wasted supperior" Did you mean "way superior" or, better yet, "far superior"?
Vastly superior?
Re: The Practice is not the Performance: Why project-based learning fails
#37The 'in industry' equivalent is 'on-the-job-training'. Employers love the idea that a software professional instead of taking a few days to acquire a new skill or technology, can just do it by using said skill on a client's project without preparation and learn as you go along.
This always fails as there is never time budgeted for this in the schedule, so the software professional is not just facing the traditional underestimated deadline, but is now faced so doing with partially unknown tools and under intense pressure to just cut every corner and rush the first ting that doesn't blow up completely. Next project, the 'new tech' is now considered 'known' and so the kludges become practice and decent learning never occurs.
Re: The Practice is not the Performance: Why project-based learning fails
#38Hmm, I would say that the key is figuring out what the project should be and how it should be carried out. That's where you need somebody mentoring.
You really don't learn network programming from programming a a chat app. That project is broken for that learning outcome. If you asked a network expert he would probably suggest to implementthe OSI model as a C library or something like that.
I would also be very cautious about the group aspect of project work. And again, you would need somebody with experience in the field to help you divide the tasks, if you insist on doing group work. Another suggestion would be to do it alone, and get to communal experience into the project in other ways, maybe through reading groups with people doing similar projects.
Re: The Practice is not the Performance: Why project-based learning fails
#39I attended a university with a strong co-op program, and I personally believe it is the best possible solution. Classes were focused on theory and my three 6-month co-ops were spent working on meaningful software projects at real companies. As a result, I was able to build up a solid background in Computer Science theory, didn't have to deal with the shortcomings of group class projects, and learned how to ship produ…
Because education as a system isn't designed for actually learning, it's designed for perpetuating a meaningless and arbitrary game of credentialism to justify the socio-economic hierarchy. And to babysit children so that their parents can spend more time participating in capitalism.
I guess you're down-voted for both having a non-obvious opinion and phrasing it in a hostile way.
You are correct however, but it's more understanable than you make out.
Rather, the education system is designed to impart the skill of information recall -- which was essential to actually acquiring the target skills (ie., you needed to remember lots about chemistry before doing any). Remembering sentences about a skill has no relationship to being able to do it, only, that as you're learning to do it, those will be an aid.
That hasnt been true for less than 20 years, perhaps 10 with the prevalence of smart phones in 2007.
The whole system is set up to impart the skill of recall and grade according to your ability to recall. There is a implicit general awareness that you're actually not aquiring the target skills.
eg., after 5-7 years of french in the UK, no 18 year old can speak french. And so on for every subject.
The same is true all the way up until PhD. It's our historical model of what education was for: giving you the library up-front.
The skills were to be obtained in employment, and with any self-motivated practice.
Today that is painfully ridiculous, and there's really almost no value in it. Leaving the warehousing, grading and certifying functions of educational institutions their only apparent use.
PS. There's an argument to say education hasn't needed to be this way since the advent of public libraries, cheap books, which is still late 20th C. This is plausible enough too. Our template of education is still basically a mix of medieval and Victorian, with the presumption that books are hard to obtain or difficult to survey oneself.
note that primary/elementary schooling isnt set up this way: it is deliberately skilling. This makes it very effective and very important.
Re: The Practice is not the Performance: Why project-based learning fails
#40In Denmark we have a two universities that almost exclusively do project based learning. Basically students are put in groups and attached a mentor who is responsible for teaching them CS. To this is coupled traditional courses in basic math/algorithms/scientific theory. These lines produce candidates that are wasted supperior to our traditional universities. Well, if you need them to actually work with CS in the rea…
I think this is right on: From the school and directly into consulting. I completely agree that these people are far superior on the work place. But hey, who ever decided that an academic computer scientist is a better hire than software engineer did something horribly wrong.
The problem is, as you mention, _universities_ are not, and should not, be geared towards the industry. That's why we have the engineering programs, which are. They are expertly taught all the Microsoft technologies completely as the mainstream Danish consultancy expect from there employees.
Furthermore, I reckon that "work with CS" for you means implementing Sitecore websites, do a bit of C#, and maybe proramming a Typescript webapp? To me those tasks have nothing to do with CS. They require no knowledge of typesystems, complexity theory, etc. (Keep in mind that CS on Danish universities is datalogi, which is the academic discipline and does not directly translate into CS as the american program)