The school I went to (University of Waterloo, in Canada) has a co-operative education program: essentially 4 months of lectures, assignments, and exams alternating with 4 months working in the field. Co-op placements are widely varied: startups, banks, insurance companies, software companies, .com's including Amazon and many more. Over the 6 co-op terms, students usually end up trying a wide range of workplace types.
I think the co-op system is a great way to settle the theory vs. marketable skills debate. The university can continue with the theory, ignore practical considerations such as the popular languages and frameworks of the day, and still turn out well-rounded graduates because they learned all the practical stuff in their work terms. The programming team I had led for the past 5 years (just moved to a new job) aways had 1-3 co-ops from Waterloo. They were bright, motivated, quick learners. And affordable! Good power-to-cost ratio for sure--even the first-year students. -Jonathan On Oct 25, 2010 3:36 AM, "Kevin Wright" <[email protected]> wrote: > This is an old, old debate, people have been questioning for years the > relative value of pure vs. applied maths, or science vs. engineering in a > teaching environment. > > On one hand, there's a strong argument for in letting students see real life > examples, and how they might actually *use* the concepts they're being > taught. Then again, there's also value in teaching the theory, showing > students the bigger picture and giving them the mental toolkit necessary to > formulate new applications by themselves. > > At the end of the day though... we need both. Everybody has a slightly > different learning style and will respond to lessons in a different way; > neither pure theory nor mindless copying of established patterns is enough > to properly teach any subject! > > > On 25 October 2010 07:53, Knubo <[email protected]> wrote: > >> In my opinion this comes down to what you want to accomplish. If you >> let people play with web applications they will most likely get more >> stuck with html and CSS (and maybe even Javascript) than actually >> learning how to program. I think that most universities want students >> to teach students how to code - learning how to do web programming can >> come later. (doing web development well with CSS/Javascript/HTML isn't >> a simple task, I'd say that it takes a couple of years to become good >> at it if you do it full time) >> >> This was at least how my first programming course was trying to do at >> the University of Oslo. In later courses programming concepts was >> teached - data structures and algorithms. Some other course tought us >> functional programming (we started with OO) and even glanced at Prolog >> and some later courses tought us about complexity of algorithms >> (things like traveling salesman problem, O notation, NPC aso). We >> didn't really focus on any framework or any other techniques. Sure we >> knew about the web and in some courses we were encouraged to write our >> own home pages even though it was not required. >> >> ...now though if you want to go down the route with developing for the >> web, why not teach students Javascript? In this way you can still >> learn programming techniques (using functional programming) and you >> also teach them a useful skill in process. >> >> KEB >> >> -- >> You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups >> "The Java Posse" group. >> To post to this group, send email to [email protected]. >> To unsubscribe from this group, send email to >> [email protected]<javaposse%[email protected]> <javaposse%[email protected]<javaposse%[email protected]> > >> . >> For more options, visit this group at >> http://groups.google.com/group/javaposse?hl=en. >> >> > > > -- > Kevin Wright > > mail / gtalk / msn : [email protected] > pulse / skype: kev.lee.wright > twitter: @thecoda > > -- > You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "The Java Posse" group. > To post to this group, send email to [email protected]. > To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [email protected]<javaposse%[email protected]> . > For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/javaposse?hl=en. > -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "The Java Posse" group. To post to this group, send email to [email protected]. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [email protected]. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/javaposse?hl=en.
