Speaking as a person who was in CS academia for 20 years but exited 10 years ago -- but I still sometimes act as an external assessor for course validation . . .
On Tue, 2010-10-05 at 05:02 -0700, Carl Jokl wrote: > I don't know how many individuals on this forum have dealings with the > Academic world and so it might be a harder question to answer. > > I had a conversation with a member of staff about the state > programming being taught at the university. Coming from a programming > background I wondered if it could be improved. At the moment it does > not seem to be in a good state at all with the assessment not really > being appropriate to demonstrating proper understanding (I can see > some of this as slightly political as if a lot of students struggle > with a subject there is a tenancy to try and make it easier so a > fairly consistent number pass rather than just letting students > fail). In the UK the core problem is that the computing-related material in school curriculum for 11-18 year olds is Word/Excel use tarted up as "information technology". In effect it is ECDL training masquerading as education. Most pupils are way beyond the sophistication of the teachers in their use of computers and mobile phones so are turned off by the subject. In UK non-CS society, computing == information technology == computer science, so the school IT curriculum turns people of thinking about doing CS at university. The Russell Group universities don't really have a problem keeping their quality CS courses going as they can take the top UK students and augment that with non-UK nationals who are queuing up to study at UK Russell Group universities. In the late 1980s earlier 1990s we were working with a functional programming / object-oriented programming curriculum using Miranda/Scheme/Haskell and then C++. This served many aims not just programming, so it all worked very well. Then came Java and everyone tried to do all teaching using it and thereby lost all the hooks into other material that was so easy with the Haskell/C++ base. These days, I am an advocate of using either Python or Groovy for a first language then something like Prolog or Haskell. Students then need to learn Java and C++ (or possibly D, or Go). > Part of the discussion interested me. It seems as time goes on the > impression from the staff is that students have seemingly had a harder > and harder time understanding programming concepts. More students are > pushing to try and avoid their project involving any programming if > they can help it. This sentiment is even starting to be manifest in > some of the Masters (Postgrad) students. There is no doubt that there has been grade inflation in the UK and I suspect everywhere else except possibly the International Baccalaureate. Overall students are not as prepared for traditional university level material as they were. Also in the late 1990s there was a rush of people who signed up to study CS but didn't want to actually learn anything they just wanted to pay for a CS degree so they could get a good job. Whilst now over, the consequences and hangovers from this problem persist. In the places I was, we refused to allow 1st year -> 2nd year progression unless people had passed their programming courses. It was clear that our graduating students were better programmers (and analysts, software engineers, etc.) than those institutions that did not do this. > I wondered it this is a problem or trend confined just to the > University I am involved with (which I could accept) or if this is > part of a more widespread problem which others have observed > elsewhere? It's more prevalent than you think and would like. > Is the computer world in which they grew up different to the point > that they have different expectations from computing than we may have > had? Clearly. The smartphone has changed the whole teenager experience. > I find the ability to program empowering and find it a real shame that > so many students brand programming as "boring". I do think though that > using examples like ATM machines is hardly going make students exited > about programming. -- Russel. ============================================================================= Dr Russel Winder t: +44 20 7585 2200 voip: sip:[email protected] 41 Buckmaster Road m: +44 7770 465 077 xmpp: [email protected] London SW11 1EN, UK w: www.russel.org.uk skype: russel_winder
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