On Thu, Jan 28, 2016 at 01:33:57AM +0100, Giuseppe Profiti wrote: > The lesson was something like that: less than 1 hour of explanation, > then exercises were presented and the students had 1 hour or a bit > more to complete them. Using colored stickers, students could > attract our attention when they needed help. > > I was a bit skeptic about this approach: the students had no clue > about the content and the format of the input file provided, some of > the steps required knowledge about a couple of bugs in the software > UI, and there was no explanation on the expected output (or on the > meaning of the output, when there was more than one result). Also, > given the length of the session there was no way to adjust their > pace: few finished almost all the exercises, some were stuck at the > first one and so on. > > However, another trainer pointed out that in this way the students > were forced to think about the problems they were facing and to ask > for help.
I was catching up on the Computing Education Blog [1] spearheaded by Mark Guzdial, and came across this comment [2] linking [3] which seems like a nice review article pointing out lots of research in favor of a more hands-on approach to teaching. I haven't had time to go through and digest it yet, but thought I'd post a reference here in case it provides a foothold in the existing body of research on this sort of issue. Cheers, Trevor [1]: https://computinged.wordpress.com/ [2]: https://computinged.wordpress.com/2016/03/04/friction-between-programming-professionals-and-beginners/#comment-52575 [3]: https://doi.org/10.1207/s15326985ep4102_1 (open access) Paul A. Kirschner, John Sweller, and Richard E. Clark (2006) Why Minimal Guidance During Instruction Does Not Work: An Analysis of the Failure of Constructivist, Discovery, Problem-Based, Experiential, and Inquiry-Based Teaching, Educational Psychologist, 41:2, 75-86. -- This email may be signed or encrypted with GnuPG (http://www.gnupg.org). For more information, see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pretty_Good_Privacy
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