2017-12-05 18:19 GMT+01:00 Greg Wilson <[email protected]>: > A result that may be of use in designing Carpentry lessons (from > https://doi.org/10.1145/3141880.3141898): > > Intuition suggests that problems from a familiar context should be easier >> to solve than the same problems described using an unfamiliar domain. >> However, prior work on contextualized programming problems has found little >> evidence to support this hypothesis. In this paper, we extend this work by >> exploring the use of a particular familiar context: problem domains used >> earlier in an introductory programming course. We conduct a crossover >> design study in a large introductory programming course to compare problems >> with and without context related to previous coursework. Our results >> suggest that any advantage conveyed by a familiar context is dominated by >> other factors, such as the complexity of terminology used in the >> description, the length of the problem description, and the availability of >> examples. This suggests that educators should focus on simplicity of >> language and the development of examples, rather than seeking contexts that >> may aid in understanding problems. >> >
Thanks Greg, This is a confirmation of something we are experiencing in classroom. However, I found the familiar domain useful not for the specific programming problem, but rather for showing how programming is not something different from other "common" activities (e.g. I usually start with a "let's plan a vacation" example to show how a problem can be split in subproblems and the different solutions for the same subproblem). That sometimes helps in overcoming some skepticism. However, this is only anecdotal evidence and not a proper scientific analysis. Giuseppe
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