Teaching Programming Strathclyde’s way

A second year course in ADS in Java A 2nd year course algorithms and data structures about 200 students Java 2 semester (48 lectures) 2 hours of labs per week no tutorials 6 assessed exercises two hour exam 52233

A 5* course book slides provided not always a blessing for the lecturer! Jdsl, the java data structures library Took some months to make choice of book Also got Bruce Eckel’s book TIJ Course Book(s)

All material available on CD the web site, book, software,... after 1st 1/4 year one at start of course thereafter £3 a cd Permission from Goodrich and Tamassia Permission from Eckel No paper notes no paper notes Distributing Course Material

No paper handouts

Course work e-submitted and e-marked students can mark in advance no real problems students accepted this. Plagiarism detection 3 levels but what do you do when detected? Functional testing only trick the marker? Model answer presented in the lecture E-marking

One lecturer (me) in lab for 1 hour, each lab two 3d year students assist they are excellent they liked it, enjoy the role more money than stacking shelves mentoring an Edinburgh DAI idea it happens naturally Help in the lab

Contacts newsgroup, tremendous! But hold back. Let them answer their questions! What’s new! , special folder phone me, from the lab please don’t come to my office Contacts

Poor attendance high quality book, notes, slides, demos, etc Introduce spot tests a quick 10 minute question give user name get Fiona to capture use diff to find who is not there Repeat randomly those that are absent! Attendance

Live Dangerously Cut code in the lecture theatre lapTop and beamer java and emacs You will make mistakes students love this! Tell them what you are thinking a stream of consciousness are you teaching them to think? Introduce errors! Show them how you debug Expose your 1/2 baked thoughts “I want something like this …” Throw away the perfect prepared answer Talk, talk, talk, talk...

The web site again

1st Year An interview with Murray Wood Patrick & Quintin

1st Year The Mark and Murray Show 12 credits in 1st year 2 credits programming in java 2 credits Organisation/Hardware 1 credit Apps and Imps 5 credits maths 2 credits something else 110 CS students 170 others

1st Year Programming 22 weeks 2 lectures a week 2 hours lab a week marked off in the lab functional testing worth 1 mark (tick) 9 practicals in first 12 weeks 1 test in 2 hour lab worth 5 marks 2 more 1 hour tests in second semester In total, 15 practicals 13 worth 1 mark each = 13 3 worth 5 marks each = 15 must get 75% to sit exam

1st Year Programming 3 supervisors to 50 seat lab lecturer + TA + 4y student Sample solution posted each week Lab exam 3 lots of 6 questions No solutions given out! 90 minutes to do, last 30 minutes to mark students can leave when they want at end, about 10 students left 1 written exam 2 hours given a piece of code questions built around this OCW if less than 70% in course work sizeable piece of work

1st Year Programming Exemption scheme write an application in java 10% attempt this 70% gets an excemption Very high pass rate in exam

1st Year Programming 1 page handout per week

1st Year Programming java/oops lack of emphasis on problem solving degree is very focussed on java rationalisation, but some casualties

1st Year Programming Course book by Garside and Mariani Garside and Mariani don’t use it Student volunteers helping choose next course book write one page report keep the book Course is distributed on CD 50% take CD pay £3

2nd Year Programming 5/6 of 2nd year is CS! 2 credits on ADS 2 credits prog project problem solving addressed in 2nd year! C in low level programming course no comparative languages course no ml, prolog, …

Conclusion? Different ways to teach CS specialise on 1 language? Coding versus problem solving? Many small or few big exercises more labs, less tutorials lab exam My way ( ) performance CS problem solving as a stream of consciousness