Student’s Sharing Projects
There was once a legal case where a student, proud of their work in the programming course, posted their solution online. The university (San Jose State) eventually had to give in. Which seems right to me. Especially given the real…
Nanopass Compiler
Through a friend, I got hold of a provocative paper A Nanopass Framework for Compiler Education, by Sarkar, Waddell, and Dybvig. They describe a compiler written in scheme that makes 50ish passes. Each pass is described as a language transform,…
Lessons learned while teaching.
I may have only done three classes, but already I’ve rediscovered that there is one principal to working efficiently: automate and systematize whatever you can. Practicing this mantra allows a course to run much smoother, reducing headaches and prepratory time. I’ve compiled…
Scaling Automated CS Education
The success of Salman Kahn’s Academy and other instances of disruptive education, have started me thinking about how computer science education might scale. Let’s first analyze how Kahn is organizing the learning experience. First: Have a huge collection of videos….
Why Grading Sucks
It’s not just that the student provided solutions are unexpectedly “creative” and don’t fit the designed rubric. Nor that they make you wonder “Why am I even trying?”. Nor that they invoke thoughts such as “How did we ever make…
Grading
Ugh. I spent too much time today and yesterday doing grading. I shouldn’t be this slow at it. Here’s the general process: Look at 5–10 submissions and note what are the most common errors. From this, a rubric can be…
Public School, it is a Prison
How the Public Schools Keep Your Child a Prisoner of the State by Karen De Coster, has a few interesting links about how public schools act like prisons for both mind and body. A really well researched article on equality…
Don’t Fear the Mistakes
During teaching, there is a fascinating (and unfortunately common) problem: Students are VERY reluctant to suggest an answer, for fear that they might be wrong. Salman Kahn, noticed this phenomenon after he started doing videos for his niece and nephew:…
Project Course in Web Services
I’ve just finished reading Phillip Greenspun’s experience report, Teaching Software Engineering, which details a project course in building Web Services. Even though I personally, hate the Web’s architecture (but that’s a rant for some other time), it still remains as…
Separating the Wheat from the Chaff
From Coding Horror: Separating Programming Sheep from Non-Programming Goats I learned of a paper, The camel has two humps, which describes a test that allows teachers to differentiate students likely to do well studying computer science from those who will…