H.C. Davis

1

Approaches to Dealing with Diversity in
Introductory Programming

• H.C. Davis
• IAM Learning TechnologiesElectronics and
  Computer ScienceThe University of Southampton,
  UK
• hcd_at_ecs.soton.ac.uk
• http//www.ecs.soton.ac.uk/hcd
• with assistance from
• Christopher Gutteridge
• Help Desk Co-ordinator

2
This talk

• Im going to
• convince you that there is a problem
• describe some of the attempts we have made to
  solve this problem
• evaluate the success of these solutions

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Question 1

• Do you differentiate your teaching of
  introductory programming for students of
  different abilities/experience?
• YES we formally recognise at least three groups
  (advanced, normal, novice)
• YES we formally provide extra assistance for
  novices
• YES but only informally, e.g. by spending more
  time in labs with those who need it
• NO all students get the same treatment

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Our Surveys

• 50 intake have A level Computing
• 25 have Programming skills and experience beyond
  that required for A level
• 25 have no programming experience
• (This is fairly typical of many universities)

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Consequences

• Beginners find pace too fast
• Experienced find pace too slow
• Beginners intimidated by know-alls
• Students at both ends of the initial ability
  range express unambiguous dissatisfaction
• Students progress through degree unable to code
• And we are not intending to harmonize entry
  requirements (e.g. A level Computing)

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Approaches Already Tried

• Schools regularly use differentiated learning
• Universities have typically not felt it important
  as students have similar points scores on entry
• In CS we have tried approaches to level the
  playing field
• Structured Programming (Pascal)
• Language Independent approaches a la Bornat
• Functional languages (SML, Miranda, Scheme)
• But OO is currently increasing the divide

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Approaches to dealing with the already skilled
programmers

• Based on a paper by Jenkins (in which he
  describes Rocket Scientists)
• The principle is that once you have learned one
  or two languages learning another is easily done
  self paced
• It is the programming and OO principles you need
  them to concentrate on.

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Differentiated Approach

• At Southampton students group themselves
  following an Initial Skills Survey
• Space Cadets
• Strugglers
• The Rest
• Course covered in 3 lectures per week
• not compulsory for space cadets
• Extra lecture split into two
• motivational lecture for space cadets
• Revision / Tutorial for strugglers
• The rest need not attend
• Space Cadets need not attend labs log books
• Space Cadets do standard courseworks plus other
  challenges

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Challenging the Space Cadets(1) Making things
more difficult

• Initially we gave them similar tasks to the rest
• Just used more interesting examples
• reading a string from a text file
• became
• turning an email id into a persons name (by
  using the departmental info web page)

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Challenging the Space Cadets(2)Going beyond the
syallabus

• After the introduction to applets
• Write a freehand drawing applet
• Just use your imagination to make as interesting
  drawing facilities as possible with as little
  programming as possible.
• A Student solution

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Challenging the Space Cadets(3)Getting the
students to reflect

• Get Students to reflect
• Create a simple spirograph drawing applet
• Enhance it for a particular application
• Assess each others work

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Challenging the Space Cadets(4)Making it fun (or
toys for the boys?)

• Robocode (IBM framework for building robots)

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Assisting strugglers (1)- make lectures active
and relevant

• Concentrate on active teaching techniques
• Keep going back to basics
• Typically strip the current coursework down to
  the essential fundamental task and get them to
  solve it in groups in class.
• Very interactive question and answer sessions.
• Ensure that every student participates
• Code solutions in class (compile every line!)

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Question 1

• In the average large lecture, which do you think
  is nearest the truth?
• 100 of students concentrate 100 of time
• 75 of students concentrate 75 of time
• 50 of students concentrate 75 of time
• 50 of students concentrate 50 of time
• 25 of students concentrate 50 of time
• Worse than that

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Assisting strugglers (2)- ensure its all on the
web

• Course notes
• Labs
• Assignments
• Past exams and solutions
• Multiple choice quizzes
• Step by step coding examples
• Local Newsgroup for questions
• FAQ
• Coursemaster style programming exercises
• Pointers to on-line tutorials, books etc.

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Assisting the strugglers (3)- help systems

• Teaching assistant as tutor should mark assist
  at labs and mark courseworks
• Some Universities appoint other students as
  happy helpers
• 10 hours a day Helpdesk
• Local Newsgroup/Forum for questions (staff have
  editing rights)
• Buddying

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Assisting the strugglers (4)- careful design of
courseworks and labs

• We found students did not relate to the problems
  we set we employed a recent student to help us
  choose the courseworks
• Careful staging of the courseworks to make clear
  what is required to pass (to demonstrate required
  learning outcomes)
• (Encourage strugglers not to attempt advanced/
  open ended parts intended for space cadets).

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Question 2

• What percentage of your students do you think
  include some code that they have cut and pasted
  from another student?
• Greater than 75
• 50 - 74
• 25 - 49
• 10 - 24
• Less than 10
• Our students would never do that

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Assisting the strugglers (5)- stamp out
plagiarism

• Recent studies (Culwin 2001) show plagiarism is
  usually much worse than staff assume
• Preventing plagiarism forces students to engage
  with the problem
• - but we may not wish to stop them working in
  teams / buddying.

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Evaluating the Results

• At Southampton we measure the effectiveness of
  our approach in three ways
• Correlating initial confidence with final results
• Student feedback
• Measuring change in initial confidence on next
  semester Advanced Programming Course

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Student Confidence at start of Advanced
Programming course
How Confident are you about Java Programming?
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Reflections space cadets

• Buy-in less than ideal
• No marks awarded for these activities
• Interesting problems require TIME
• Interesting programs are difficult to explain
• Students frequently out-program lecturer
• a recognition of this is important for many!
• Good feedback from students
• Some students slipped through the gap between
  being space cadets and the rest learned
  programming but not principles.

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Reflections - strugglers

• Dont call them strugglers!
• The problems are to get them to
• write any program (time on task)
• join in the community of learning (so they get
  the right help)
• understand how to learn in lectures (active
  learning)
• realise that this may be hard and need work (many
  have a culture of strategic study which may not
  work here)
• Students on with-CS courses do not have the
  same buy-in, and sometimes fail to join the
  community of learning
• Exams should be hands-on