This sounds like an interesting problem around the role of university
education.
Traditionally / ("in olden times?"), one of the differentiators
between school and university was that at university students were
considered to take full responsibility for their own learning. As a
student I was told employers valued this -- when they were hiring
graduates, they wanted to see that their potential employee did not
need constant hand-holding and spoon-feeding, but that if you put him/
her in an environment where help is available on request, suitable
resource material and experts to ask are abundant, and say "here's
your goal; now go for it" that potential employee would not flounder
but would be able to identify the resources they need, learn what they
need, and get it done. Of course that is a very traditional/old-
fashioned view of universities that asks very few pedagogical skills
of the lecturers. It places all the blame on the students.
The more recent consideration is for universities to be seen as
education suppliers, and students are their customers. The
relationship between the university and the student is a business
relationship (the student really is paying for some of it now), and
value-for-money is a genuine and reasonable concern. Is the pedagogy
of the lecturer good enough? If the customer has paid to learn this
material, and they haven't done so, what should the lecturers have
done better to give full satisfaction to their customer?
I guess the second half of the question is "how much hand-holding is
best for programmers in the long-run"? Is programming a "threshold
concept" whereby once you've "got it" it all becomes much easier
thenceforth, so if we can just hand-hold students til they get over
the threshold they will be fine after they graduate? Or is it a
continuous incline of learning -- and if you hand-hold the student all
the way to graduation, will they feel like they've fallen off a cliff
when they go out and get employment only to find that all those
careful pedagogical plans stop at the university exit gate?
I don't mean any rhetoric by this, but it sounds like an interesting
problem.
William
On 30 Nov 2009, at 10:15, R Bartlett wrote:
Let me chime in with an echo of what Lindsay said, and put it to you
that CS students who are, quote, "not very good at programming", are
the kinds of students I expect a competent system to sharpen up, or
grind out. I don't expect it to find a way to make them good
programmers
in spite of themselves, if those very students lack sufficient
drive and
aptitude to conquer the material at hand under their own steam.
Well this discussion all boils down to the role of education. THere
are two attitudes
1) We'll take your money, but really you shouldn't be on this course
- we would like people who can already program so that we don't
have to teach anything.
or
2) We'll take your money, and do the best we can with you.
----- Original Message ----- From: "Frank Wales" <fr...@limov.com>
To: <Ppig-Discuss-List@open.ac.uk>
Cc: "R Bartlett" <ra.bartl...@ntlworld.com>
Sent: Sunday, November 29, 2009 11:31 PM
Subject: Re: "Intuitiveness" of programming languages/paradigms
R Bartlett wrote:
I think if you ask CS undergraduates who are not very good at
programming whether they want to program, the answer will change
from yes to no after a couple of months.
Let me chime in with an echo of what Lindsay said, and put it to you
that CS students who are, quote, "not very good at programming", are
the kinds of students I expect a competent system to sharpen up, or
grind out. I don't expect it to find a way to make them good
programmers
in spite of themselves, if those very students lack sufficient
drive and
aptitude to conquer the material at hand under their own steam.
How much they have paid for the course, or how high their hopes have
been piled, doesn't matter for CS students any more than it matters
for music students or medical students or Latin students.
And I have no vested interest in defending the current teaching
situation;
rather I'm a walking, talking data-point from both sides of the
student body.
I was rightly ground out of medicine, due to lack of interest; I
got distinction
passes in computing and molecular biology, despite copious non-
academic
stresses, due to compelling interest.
In both cases, the teaching staff helped, but I saw it as my job to
fail or succeed. I managed to do both, in different fields,
according to
my drive and aptitude, and I wouldn't expect higher education to be
any other way.
--
Frank Wales [fr...@limov.com]
