Timeline for How to deal with the wealth of "help" available for programming assignments?
Current License: CC BY-SA 3.0
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| Mar 14, 2016 at 1:41 | comment | added | user28174 | @Kimball I have been studying mental development (throughout life) and trying to figure out what will be useful to "teach" abstraction, but haven't come up with much. It is a process of relentless application: keep trying to solve algorithmic problems. Peoples' ability to think symbolically varies, and it can grow, but not really be taught. It is like weightlifting: you have to lift the weights yourself, nothing will remove the effort required. So when I see students short-cut the effort, it is like watching someone lift balloons: what are they thinking? | |
| Mar 12, 2016 at 14:44 | comment | added | Kimball | Regarding your last comment, I often (when I teach some programming in my math classes) give paper programming quizzes or simple programming problems on paper exams just to make sure they can write simple code on their own. I also usually meet with them in a computer lab once/week and have them work on lab exercises, and go around and see how they are doing. | |
| Mar 11, 2016 at 13:02 | comment | added | user28174 | Up to now I disregarded the idea that they could be looking online. Most of the exercises were just too simple to seem to require research (this is chapter 5, OK?) I didn't realize that they would not try to solve it themselves. They have ample time, and are sitting in front of a computer full-time, which is more than I could say 30 years ago. So when I saw two basically identical submissions with weird flaws, I realized that they are not trying to do the simple assignments. What are they doing with their time? I look at them all day long. Don't they want to be able to work in the future? | |
| Mar 11, 2016 at 10:06 | comment | added | Migz | I would want to emphasize that in programming you will absolutely want to know how the code works and why it works. I don't believe that copying code is a bad thing, however if they do it, they should know EXACTLY how it works. Simply asking a student what a certain line of code does and how it works could make them sweat. If they actually know the code. Then even the students would have no problem explaining it. and may even do so proudly. | |
| Mar 11, 2016 at 7:22 | history | answered | ff524 | CC BY-SA 3.0 |