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from the does-it-count-as-a-foreign-language dept.
Mark Guzdial at ACM (Association of Computing Machinery) writes:
I have three reasons for thinking that learning CS is different than learning other STEM disciplines.
- Our infrastructure for teaching CS is younger, smaller, and weaker;
- We don't realize how hard learning to program is;
- CS is so valuable that it changes the affective components of learning.
The author makes compelling arguments to support the claims, ending with:
We are increasingly finding that the emotional component of learning computing (e.g., motivation, feeling of belonging, self-efficacy) is among the most critical variables. When you put more and more students in a high-pressure, competitive setting, and some of whom feel "like" the teacher and some don't, you get emotional complexity that is unlike any other STEM discipline. Not mathematics, any of the sciences, or any of the engineering disciplines are facing growing numbers of majors and non-majors at the same time. That makes learning CS different and harder.
(Score: 5, Interesting) by looorg on Wednesday January 10 2018, @11:38PM (3 children)
He isn't really making a very compelling argument at all. He identifies a problem, gives example(s) of another, then offers solutions for something else. Then blames the problem on something different. Then goes on a little rant about how they so special normal teaching techniques apparently doesn't apply to them. No wonder his students are confused if they can't even seem to grasp the problem or issues in a proper manner.
It's a young field so we have not developed the teaching techniques yet. Is not a valid excuse. You don't have to reinvent the wheel every time. There are valid generic teaching tools that are cross topic. CS is not some kind of unique little snowflake topic that nobody could understand. How it is taught might in large depend on where it is associated with as a subject -- if CS falls into the maths, physics and engineering departments it's taught as if it was that. Somehow they have managed to train multitudes of people during the last decades. If things are more complex now it's cause they have created a shit system of complexity. They have made it harder on themselves then it has to be then.
The "rainfall problem" hasn't become harder. It has not been redefined or anything. If you are still trying to figure out how to teach a 40ish year old problem today and can't figure that one out there probably isn't much help we can offer you. When you get data from students trying to solve it over and over and over again, and apparently failing, you should note where the failure occurs and solve that problem. Clearly you are not explaining something very well, or you fail to take note of a waste amount of failures as experience to improve your teaching methods.
So you have not yet figured out that you should be teaching two different classes? As an example one doesn't teach the same Statistics introduction class to mathematicians as to econ-students as to social-science students. Why? Cause they are different and have different needs and you adapt to them. If one hasn't figured that one out yet one is somewhat beyond help really. From personal experience I can tell you that with the given three groups of students the tolerance for abstraction goes down sharply -- with the maths students you can talk quite abstract and with formulas and the further away from maths you come the more real world examples you have to use. No special snowflake teaching tools are going to put all these different students in the same class and they will all be happy in the end. There will be differentiation between or in the groups to (say all not econ-students are the same). But some will either be crushed by how hard it is, while others will laugh at what a shit course this was and how easy it was and how retarded some of the other students must be. There just isn't a way around that, most likely.
That said there just isn't some magic-CS-teaching that will resolve all these issues and make everyone a good little code-monkey.
But this just isn't a very compelling or unique argument at all. That argument is so general it's true for learning pretty much anything. It's pretty much impossible to teach someone something it they are not motivated or want to learn something. Thought just don't get transferred with feelings or osmosis just being in close proximity to the source. That isn't true for any subject matter. If what they have to teach is so hard then perhaps their students are just weak or idiots or what or the way they teach it is all wrong. Buhu my subject is so hard ...
But to make things worse then apparently this wasn't what the author wanted to convey at all. He responded to one of the comments. He isn't talking about the mental complexity, or abstraction, issues of the subject, or probably not even how to teach the subject. What he is actually wondering is why so many students are dropping CS classes. Best guess? Programming requires a certain layer of abstract thinking and planning that some people just can't grasp. There might also be more students that want to try out this "CS" thing and see if they understand. Not a lot of students apply the the maths program just to see what it's all about. Students that apply there know what they are getting, they where good at maths in all the previous levels of schooling. So they usually know what they are getting. That might clearly not be the case with computers then if people are failing and dropping the course at an alarming rate. Perhaps those students actually drank your cool aid about how CS is for everybody.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by crafoo on Thursday January 11 2018, @02:03AM (2 children)
Students come to university level science, math, and computer classes armed with unrealistic and absurd notions of what it will take to succeed.
Learning a real science (or computer science) amounts to sipping expensive coffees in swank environments while smooth jazz plays lightly in the background. You and your snowflake friends gossip about the professors hairdo and then get down to business of booting up your new macbook pros and picking just the right background image. It needs to convey "smart, sexy, but hardcore hacker-in-training". Everyone high-fives and then goes back to the dorm to work on their super-secret business plan to be the next Amazon/Google/Paypal/SpaceX.
Then you fail and bitch about your fee-fees. Surprise. No one gives a fuck.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Thursday January 11 2018, @06:12AM (1 child)
I was totally with you till you got to that point. That never happens!
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday January 11 2018, @06:32AM
No. This is what happens. You pass. And you go out into the real world where THERE ARE NO JOBS IN TECH.
Then you go back to your former professors and you ask, why does anyone bother going to university when THERE ARE NO JOBS IN TECH.
And your professors will reply, oh well it's a gamble, and such a shame that THERE ARE NO JOBS IN TECH.
And finally your alumni association will beg you for donations from some of that big money they heard you would be making. Except you don't have any money because THERE ARE NO JOBS IN TECH.
THERE ARE. NO JOBS. IN TECH.