Teaching Computer Programming
I think it's interesting to consider how this may be applied to the teaching of computer programming. There's very little that needs to be memorized, and most of the learning process revolves around applying techniques to a problem the student has never seen before.
As such, the usual approaches of visual and auditory presentation, while briefly important in presenting the basic techniques, aren't really central to the learning process. It only takes five minutes to give a learner the basic syntax of a loop. But it will take hours of practice for most learners to figure out how to use them.
This raises several questions in my mind:
1) Are presentation techniques still relevant in the teaching of computer programming?
2) Could there be some applicability specifically to the types of exercises presented and how they are assigned and approached by the students?
3) Could there be other factors involved besides audible, visual, or written word that apply specifically to the teaching of computer programming?
Any thoughts are appreciated!
Hi Heather, Thanks for your post to the forum. Yes, having that "Hand-ons" is vital!
Best wishes for continued success in your teaching career. Susan
Susan Polick
I think this may be a problem for those that are hands on learners. Even though they are told and shown how to do something they will need that ability to go through the process while being shown and told how. They actually have to put their hands on the project to have it sink in during the explanation.
Hi Pat, Again, since I know nothing about programming, I posed your question to our lead Programming instructor. Here is his response:
"You ( or he) has asked the million dollar question that has been asked literally for thousands of years as the familiar Biblical quote will point out. "He who has ears to hear, let him hear."
So here's my 2 cents... It's all about the presentation. Truly it takes 5-10 minutes to explain the functionality and components of a loop, but the trick is to explain it in terms that the student is familiar with (to hear), in a context that they can relate to (to see) and in an environment that then can experiment with (touch). If this is done successfully, the student will stay up into the wee hours of the night 'getting it right', if it fails, no worries, you just reload, saddle up and move out. (A.K.A. do it all again)
Hope this helps :-)
Best Regards,
-jim "
Susan Polick
