Steve Shaffer wrote: > According to Arzarello, Chiappini, Lemut, Marara, and Pellery (1993), > an important part of learning to program is the "sudden transition > from simple computational attempts to the synthesis of the whole in a > procedure or program" (p. 289). However, a significant percentage of > students may not be able to make this leap, as exemplified by the > bimodal distribution of grades in programming classes, where some > students seem to "get it" while others "just don't get it" (Hudak and > Anderson, 1990). Applying Piagetian theory may supply an answer to > this conundrum, specifically involving concrete versus formal > operations stages of development. The latter stage "entails grasping > the logic of all possible combinations of items or events, developing > a combinatorial system, and unifying operations into a structured > whole... data indicate that as many as 50% or more of college > students are not formal operators.. [some] express alarm, arguing > that the use of nonformal operational thinking by college students is > increasing, and propose methods for promoting stage advancement" > (Hudak, M. and Anderson, D., 1990, p. 231).
We have actually done that for our introductory programming students and found - much to our surprise- that there were no statistically significant correlation between their development level and the outcome of the programming course - see Bennedsen, J. and Caspersen, M. E. 2006. Abstraction ability as an indicator of success for learning object-oriented programming?. SIGCSE Bull. 38, 2 (Jun. 2006), 39-43. DOI= http://doi.acm.org/10.1145/1138403.1138430 > A big problem is how to mass-produce this cognitive apprenticeship; I > have 52 students in each of my introductory programming classes; > there is no time for one-on-one instruction. I do try to model > "programming behavior" by solving problems real-time on an overhead > projector; I don't prepare the demonstration problem solutions ahead > of time, but solve them with the students watching -- including > forgotten semicolons and all. I also verbalize my thought process > while solving the problem. This is the closest I've been able to > come to mass-producing cognitive apprenticeship. Agree. As an extra way of exposing the programming process we use "process recordings" - video recordings of an "expert's" solution of a programming exercise. We have written a little about them - see Bennedsen, J. and Caspersen, M. E. 2005. Revealing the programming process. SIGCSE Bull. 37, 1 (Feb. 2005), 186-190. DOI= http://doi.acm.org/10.1145/1047124.1047413 Jens Bennedsen, it-west, networking universities ---------------------------------------------------------------------- PPIG Discuss List (discuss@ppig.org) Discuss admin: http://limitlessmail.net/mailman/listinfo/discuss Announce admin: http://limitlessmail.net/mailman/listinfo/announce PPIG Discuss archive: http://www.mail-archive.com/discuss%40ppig.org/
