Monday, 19 August 2024, 13:15, Innovation Space, Level 2, Birch Building
Abstract
In this talk, I’ll introduce a range of computing education research / practice undertaken at the University of Glasgow in recent years, which hopefully address issues in our introductory computing sequence. Rather than delving deep, it’ll be more of an overview, enabling extended discussion about aspects that may be of interest in your own practice or research. I’ll speak to the following:
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Setting a big picture context for students and staff to orient study/instruction. Ben du Boulay identified this as one of his five major issues back in the 1980s, and it is still a current topic with a paper on Transparent Instruction in this year’s International Computing Education Research conference. We have developed the so-called ABC framework, initially to structure the Scottish schools CS curriculum, but which I have also used effectively in introductory programming - and which we should probably use more broadly! It presents computing as fundamentally a modelling discipline.
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Program comprehension has been shown to be critical to developing programming skills. This was also a key item in du Boulay’s landmark 1980s paper, backed up particularly by the Australian Bracelet project led by Raymond Lister from around 2005. Schulte’s 2008 Block Model is a way for instructors to consider program comprehension, and I’ll speak to using a simplified version of this with students from the first days of an introductory programming course to help them understand the big picture around their learning.
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Part of the hidden curriculum in any undergraduate computing course is probably the ability to learn new programming languages. This involves transferring knowledge about known PLs to new PLs. We have developed a model for programming language transfer - which we have principally used when students move from first to second PL - and a pedagogy embodying the model.
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The PL transfer work indicates that there needs to be more explicit connection/communication between the specifications and instructors of modules in an introductory computing course sequence, to develop expert knowledge models, rather than just a collection of separated bodies of knowledge. We have noticed this same issue elsewhere - and how modularisation can block sound developmental learning. Bruner’s Spiral Curriculum model is a good touchstone here, building on top of Piaget’s models of assimilation and accommodation.
Biography
Quintin Cutts is Professor of Computer Science Education within the School of Computing Science at the University of Glasgow. His research centres on computer science education. He is involved in the development of school curricula for computer science, having contributed to the new Curriculum for Excellence in Scotland, as well as initiatives further afield in England and internationally. He has received awards for learning and teaching excellence, and is committed to engaging students deeply with their studies at all levels, drawing on his own and other research into psychological aspects of learning and technology in education. He is leading the development of a teacher association for Scottish CS teachers, and developing novel teacher training models to increase teacher numbers.
In 2015, he was awarded an MBE for services to computer science.