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Learning Computer Science is Different than Learning Other STEM Disciplines

Accepted submission by fliptop at 2018-01-10 13:44:52
Career & Education

Mark Guzdial at ACM writes [acm.org]:

I have three reasons for thinking that learning CS is different than learning other STEM disciplines.

  1. Our infrastructure for teaching CS is younger, smaller, and weaker;
  2. We don’t realize how hard learning to program is;
  3. 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.


Original Submission