Re: STUDENTS GO AWAY!!!!!!!??????

[NKSW39B@prodigy.com (Matthew Givens)]

dewar@merv.cs.nyu.edu (Robert Dewar) wrote:
>
>Matthew said
>
><<Student or professional, a problem is a problem>>
>
>No, that's not quite true. And that's precisely the disctinction that I
>try to emphasize to people. If a profession posts a question saying
>"I need to glub a zork", then we help him or her figure out how to
>glub a zork, since that is the issue.
>
>But it a student says "I need to glub a zork [for an assignment]", the
>point of the assignment is not to glub a zork, it is for the student to
>FIGURE OUT HOW to glub a zork. It is this process of figuring out for
>yourself that is absolutely crucial to the learning process when it 
comes
>to programming.

I think that's the point of contention, here.  Certainly you don't give 
someone the answer to the assignment.  But if the question is something 
like "I don't understand inheritance, can anyone help?", then we have a 
different situation on our hands.  And forbidding the students from 
accessing the group where the knowledgable people congregate isn't the 
answer.  Instead of banning all students, ban those who repeatedly misuse 
the privilege.

>One of the things that is hard to learn if you teach programming (I 
have
>been learning this for 30 years), is that when a student asks a 
question
>about their program -- the *easy* thing to do, is just to answer the
>question -- but if you do that, then you can easily short circuit the
>assignment. A very common phenomenon, that was around long before the
>net and newsgroups, since the same thing happens when you ask e.g.
>teaching assistants, is that students manage to turn in homework 
assignments
>that work without ever having learned the foggiest idea about how 
programs
>work. They do this by writing some gross approximation, and then asking
>lots of questions. People give them helpful hints ("you should 
initialize
>this variable, you should do the multiplicatoin first ... etc") and 
they
>manage to get the program working by assembling this advice.
>
>This certainly is not cheating, but it does short change the students,
>and the trouble with the newsgroups and the net is that now this effect
>can be greatly multiplied. I often see people trying to be helpful to
>students, but they don't have the experience to do it the "right" way.
>
>That's because they don't understand the distinction ("a problem is a 
>problem") between problem solving in a professional environment and
>students learning.

I have worked as a programmer since I graduated in 1987.  I have spent 
some time teaching programming (1 year full time, 5 years part time), and 
understand the distinction.  But each question should be evaluated 
separately.  By condemning all student, you close a valuable resource 
away from the ones who will use it wisely.

>
>So, always think about how to help people learn, not about how to help
>people get their program working -- the two are not quite the same.

Of course it isn't.  But if you don't allow ANY students in the 
newsgroups, where the experienced programmers regularly visit, then 
you're not helping anybody do anything.


-
If at first you don't succeed, destroy all evidence that you ever tried. 
<< Iceman >>