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Teaching other teachers how to teach CS better

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Re: Teaching other teachers how to teach CS better

#81

Post by recursive »

teddyh wrote: post #78
ModernMech wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I’m forced to waste my time doing the teacher’s job teaching simple concepts instead of learning anything new myself IMO you can't say you really understand a thing until you've taught it to someone else. Your teachers gave you the opportunity to hone your own teaching skill, something you will use your entire CS career. Just wait until you are a senior dev holding the hand of someone more junior than you. If you t…

> Your teachers gave you the opportunity to hone your own teaching skill If I wanted a lesson in teaching, I would take a class in it. Teachers should teach the subject as advertised. http://www.machall.com/view.php?date=2005-01-26

Doing group work is a very normal part of software development. Lacking any particular "advertisements", it seems entirely reasonable for a software course to provide experience that is consistent with that.

Re: Teaching other teachers how to teach CS better

#82

Post by hcs »

kilodeca wrote: post #54

Why do they use bit.ly? I can't visit bit.ly links. ERR_CONNECTION_CLOSED

- 2013 study of electrical engineering students using problem-based learning (https://bit.ly/2NVazYb): https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1002/j.2168-9830....

- 2019 Harvard study of active learning (https://bit.ly/3uQnXh4): https://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2019/09/study-shows-t...

- students have implicit bias (http://bit.ly/3e3UzOe): https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2019/05/20/fighting-gend...

- Computing classes often have a defensive climate (https://bit.ly/3qizsdH): https://www.researchgate.net/publication/2920892_Defensive_C...

- students get messages that they don't belong (https://bit.ly/3sEBsOT): https://depts.washington.edu/sibl/wp-content/uploads/2017/10... (PDF)

- on formative assessment in K-12 CS (https://bit.ly/3sHAAJd): https://csassess.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/01/Final-Submit... (PDF)

- on effective design of formative feedback (https://bit.ly/3qaF8Gz): https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Qiang-Hao-15/publicatio... (PDF)

- treating teaching innovation as action research (http://bit.ly/3efbyxl): http://www.ascd.org/publications/books/100047/chapters/What-...

Re: Teaching other teachers how to teach CS better

#84

Post by the-smug-one »

AlwaysRock wrote: post #68
the-smug-one wrote: post #29

Teaching the course content through lectures is overrated, in my opinion. I rarely went to lectures, but the ones I did go to I was there not because I felt a need to learn the course material but because I could in some way engage with the lecturer. One lecturer would talk about how things looked in "real papers", and how new algorithms would get published even though they lacked certain key invariants, and how stup…

>> Learning is easy for me, I just sit down and engage with the material in earnest. Fixed it for you. What is true for you is not true for all.

Thank you! Learning is easy in the way that weight loss is easy (for all). The actual work to be done is easily defined and simply needs to be done, but that process can be much harder to go through for some than for others. Or perhaps you disagree even more?

Re: Teaching other teachers how to teach CS better

#85

Post by barry-cotter »

teddyh wrote: post #51
throwaway287391 wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> in groups of two I wouldn't doubt there's good research showing pair programming is a great way to learn, but anecdotally/observationally I really have trouble believing it's effective. In my experience, in at least half of pairs there will be one more skilled programmer and one less skilled programmer and the better one does the lion's share (if not all) of the work -- this is doubly true if the partnerships are r…

I always felt cheated when teachers do this. Either I’m the better one in the pair, and I’m forced to waste my time doing the teacher’s job teaching simple concepts instead of learning anything new myself, or I’m the less knowledgeable in the pair, and instead of listening to a professional I’m stuck being tutored by an amateur who doesn’t know how to explain anything.

> Either I’m the better one in the pair, and I’m forced to waste my time doing the teacher’s job teaching simple concepts instead of learning anything new myself,

Nothing will expose the gaps in your own understanding faster than trying to teach another person. Just being forced to verbalise your own understanding helps you remember things better, even if you already had a good grasp of the material.

> or I’m the less knowledgeable in the pair, and instead of listening to a professional I’m stuck being tutored by an amateur who doesn’t know how to explain anything.

If they understand what they're talking about you can ask questions until you understand as well as they do.

Re: Teaching other teachers how to teach CS better

#86

Post by barry-cotter »

arkitaip wrote: post #41
pjc50 wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Education in IT is so continuous that people don't recognize that it's happening. Every use of google counts. You can either have a dynamic field or a mandatory curriculum. Once the curriculum is fixed, the field advances at the speed changes can be pushed into the curriculum, which is at best annually.

lmfao, pedagogical education is its own discipline and becoming a competent teacher takes proper education and training. Googling how to teach ain't going to do shit for you.

There's no evidence that education degrees make teachers more effective. If an entire degree in pedagogy has no detectable effect on student outcomes how can it help become a competent teacher?

> It's easier to pick a good teacher than to train one: Familiar and new results on the correlates of teacher effectiveness

> Neither holding a college major in education nor acquiring a master's degree is correlated with elementary and middle school teaching effectiveness, regardless of the university at which the degree was earned. Teachers generally do become more effective with a few years of teaching experience, but we also find evidence that teachers may become less effective with experience, particularly later in their careers. These and other findings with respect to the correlates of teacher effectiveness are obtained from estimations using value-added models that control for student characteristics as well as school and (where appropriate teacher) fixed effects in order to measure teacher effectiveness in reading and math for Florida students in fourth through eighth grades for eight school years, 2001-2002 through 2008-2009.

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/227414368_It's_easi...

http://www.hks.harvard.edu/pepg/MeritPayPapers/Chingos_Peter...

Re: Teaching other teachers how to teach CS better

#87

Post by pjmlp »

ModernMech wrote: post #71
Cybotron5000 wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ooft …’trendiness’/hype to blame…(for want of a better way of describing it - nothing against trendiness per se… :) …short-sighted also as technology moves so fast and what garnered the highest salaries in this generation could easily change in the next… (esp. if over-subscribed)… I teach guitar/bass/music production (though trying to slowly educate myself about CS as much as I can), but I get what you’re saying abou…

> Perhaps as CS becomes more used/diffused/familiar to practitioners of all other subjects I think you're spot on here. You don't see people flocking to the English department because they had heard the ability to read and write is essential to landing a high paying job. The same will be true for programming in the future; programming will be to the CS curriculum as reading and writing is to the English curriculum. N…

Isn't that a problem on which path gets taken to reach university actually?

Many countries have specific exams in place for each university degree, and it is expected that the basis are already in place from the highschool.

Re: Teaching other teachers how to teach CS better

#88

Post by the-smug-one »

sambe wrote: post #43
the-smug-one wrote: post #29

Teaching the course content through lectures is overrated, in my opinion. I rarely went to lectures, but the ones I did go to I was there not because I felt a need to learn the course material but because I could in some way engage with the lecturer. One lecturer would talk about how things looked in "real papers", and how new algorithms would get published even though they lacked certain key invariants, and how stup…

How did you know to go to those lectures? Reputation or trying the first few lectures? Just the start of the course feels like it might not give a good enough sample.

Typically just trying the first few, then going to another in the middle of the course or so to see if things have changed.

Re: Teaching other teachers how to teach CS better

#89

Post by Zababa »

frant-hartm wrote: post #53
throwaway77770 wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think Bob's standards are preferable. Or, in the likeness of Yegge's Execution in the Kingdom of Nouns, I present: void get_coffee() { /* ... */ } void move_away_from_obstacles(auto what_to_move_away) { /* .... */ } void place(auto object_to_place, auto to_be_placed_on) { move_away_from_obstacles(where_to_place); put_object_on(to_place, to_be_placed_on); } void sit() { place(butt, seat); } void prepare_mind()…

Haha, this is really good, never seen it. But one piece of the uncle bob's advice says you should order your functions from higher level abstraction to lower level, then it reads like a book and you can stop at any time you get the understanding of the code. So your example reordered: void get_opinion_of_uncle_bob() { prepare_mind(); opinion my_opinion = get_opinion(UNCLE_BOB); return my_opinion; } void prepare_mind(…

I've always found this advice confusing and contradicting. Higher level to lower level doesn't read like a book. To make it read like a book (or an essay), you have to "flatten the tree", do something like:

void get_opinion_of_uncle_bob() { prepare_mind(); opinion my_opinion = get_opinion(UNCLE_BOB); return my_opinion; }

void prepare_mind() { get_coffee(); sit(); }

void get_coffee() { / ... / }

void sit() { place(butt, seat); }

void place(auto object_to_place, auto to_be_placed_on) { move_away_from_obstacles(where_to_place); put_object_on(to_place, to_be_placed_on); }

void move_away_from_obstacles(auto what_to_move_away) { / .... / }

void get_opinion(int on_whom) { / .... / if (on_whom == UNCLE_BOB) { return create_opinion("too many short functions"); } }

Re: Teaching other teachers how to teach CS better

#90

Post by AlwaysRock »

the-smug-one wrote: post #84
AlwaysRock wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>> Learning is easy for me, I just sit down and engage with the material in earnest. Fixed it for you. What is true for you is not true for all.

Thank you! Learning is easy in the way that weight loss is easy (for all). The actual work to be done is easily defined and simply needs to be done, but that process can be much harder to go through for some than for others. Or perhaps you disagree even more?

I still feel that it's an oversimplification. If easy is defined by a work that can be easily defined and then needs to be done many things can be overly simplified. But I understand what you are trying to say.
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