Re: Helping Students

["Bob Klungle" <bklungle@ix.netcom.com>]

As an instructor in Ada, C, C++, Unix, Unix advanced programming at UCLA,
I wholeheartedly agree.

Bob Klungle
rklungle@ix.netcom.com

Michael Feldman <mfeldman@seas.gwu.edu> wrote in article
<5c19q5$b56@felix.seas.gwu.edu>...
> In article <5bukg7$sgg@mtinsc01-mgt.ops.worldnet.att.net>,
> FerretWoman <Ferretwoman@worldnet.att.net> wrote:
> 
> [snip]
> 
> >To all the students I say this...go see your teacher!  If you want to
> >chat up here about the types of things you are learning that's fine,
> >but when it comes to a problem, don't expect these people to solve it
> >for you.  That's not learning...that could be considered cheating...
> 
> Whether it's cheating or not depends on the course rules, which ought
> to be spelled out by the prof. 
> 
> More to the point, though - generally, we intro-course teachers try to
> give projects that are within the grasp of our students. Generally,
> we're not interested in seeing them fail, we're interested in seeing 
> them succeed. Obviously I can't speak for John English, but in my own
> course (intro-level, like his), I'm very much interested in having 
> students ask _me_ (or my TA) for help. How do we calibrate the
> difficulty of our exercises, how do we help to bail out students who
> are in trouble, if they don't come to us?
> 
> So I say to my CLA friends: if a student asks for help, I can;t prevent
> you from giving hints, but one of the hints ought to be something like
> "have you taken advantage of the help offered by your prof and others 
> associated with the course?"
> 
> Mike Feldman
> ------------------------------------------------------------------------
> Michael B. Feldman -  chair, SIGAda Education Working Group
> Professor, Dept. of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science
> The George Washington University -  Washington, DC 20052 USA
> 202-994-5919 (voice) - 202-994-0227 (fax) 
> http://www.seas.gwu.edu/faculty/mfeldman
> ------------------------------------------------------------------------
>        Pork is all that money the government gives the other guys.
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