Hi Greg, On Wed, Dec 9, 2015 at 8:00 AM, Greg Wilson <[email protected]> wrote: > Via a post by Mark Guzdial [1], I found links to these two papers: > > a) Parsons and Haden: Parson's Programming Puzzles: A Fun and Effective > Learning Tool for First Programming Courses [2] > > b) Ihantola and Karavirta: Two-Dimensional Parson's Puzzles: The Concept, > Tools, and First Observations [3] > > The first one introduces a programming exercise in which learners are given > the lines of code they need to solve a problem, and have to put them in > order. The second describes a tool for doing this with Python code (where > lines need to be indented as well as sorted), and a Javascript widget for > doing this in a web page. It would be really cool if we could incorporate > this into some of our lessons - anyone want to take a crack at it and report > back? I'd really like to know: > > 1. Does the tool work well enough to be worth adopting?
That I don't know--first time hearing about it. Would like to try it though :) > 2. Can we nest it in our lessons (which are written in Markdown) without > heroic mind-bending effort and/or use of quantum entanglement? Often when I teach testing I use a little lesson that I adapted from you once. It's a lesson on "extreme" test-driven development, in which the students are given a black-box function with a vague name--they don't know what it does or how it's implemented. They have to design a suite of unit tests intended to probe what this function actually does. Then using their tests they must re-implement the function at least insofar as it passes the tests they've written (and some that I give them too if they don't think of all the tests). I don't know if we've written that exercise down in any of the "official" lesson plans or not, but it would be nice if it fits in anywhere. As for why I'm bringing this exercise in response to this: I've had varying degrees of success with this exercise. Students have almost always found it "fun", but depending on the previous programming exercise of the students it's often too difficult and only a handful find the correct "solution". Next time I teach this exercise to a novice group I will try out this tool by at least giving them the lines of code. They then just need to assemble them in the correct order to pass the tests. Thanks, Erik _______________________________________________ Discuss mailing list [email protected] http://lists.software-carpentry.org/mailman/listinfo/discuss_lists.software-carpentry.org
