Wanted: Advice from CS teachers
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Wanted: Advice from CS teachers
When teaching a group of students new to coding I've noticed that my students who are normally very good about not calling out during class will shout "it's not working!" the moment their code hits an error and fails to run. They want me to fix it right away. This makes for too many interruptions since I'm easy to nerd snipe in this way.
I think I need to let them know that fixing errors that keep the code from running is literally what I'm trying to teach.
@futurebird
CWSL: "Compiler Warnings as a Second Language" -
Sometimes I have them write the code on paper with the computers closed. And this is fine, but I'd rather have them using the IDE or textedit and there is a limit to how much fun you can have with code on paper.
And it does tend to be the weaker students who are almost happy to find something to stop the onslaught of information "see it doesn't work! we can't go on!" and that obviously makes me very grouchy.
I need them to see this is like saying "Teacher my pencil broke! Stop the lesson!"
@futurebird Wow! A touchy bunch.
You already have a ton of replies here AND know what you’re doing so you don’t need me (random internet person but former professor with lots of experience teaching anxious undergrads coding) to chime in.
FWIW when teaching I tried to normalize “errors” even by referring to them as “messages” because calling it an error feels like “oh I already did something wrong”. But “errors” only happen because computers are truly not very smart; an error is when it can’t understand our instructions, what we are telling it to do. The human can’t make an “error”; only the computer does. Anyway I’d also shorten the cycle between coding and compiling - having students re-compile/run the program after every tiny little change shortens the feedback loop, normalizes “errors” (like exposure therapy), and makes troubleshooting easier.
Again you don’t need my input at all — thanks for the flashback to my teaching days!
Best of luck with this group!
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@futurebird I work closely with a CS teacher snd I am a language teacher and just this past Friday we had a conversation about this exact phenomenon, which we both experience. I think because they can use their first language 'perfectly' and I think because their devices work 'perfectly' they think it should be easy to do right the first time and panic when they can't. They don't know what 'perfect' looks like in math so maybe they're more patient with it. 1/2
Exactly. To the untrained eye, imperfect maths can look like good-enough maths. A compiler error is unambiguously not a good-enough anything.
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@futurebird no great insight to be honest. If I was explaining something I tell them to first listen to what I have to say, and later read carefully the error message. Recently I've witnessed students sometimes misread severely what to write (they confuse upper case I's and lower case l's), but mostly because they don't even try to make sense of what they're writing: they're just copying without thinking.
@jenesuispasgoth Nailed it: "copying without thinking" . @futurebird
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Example of the problem:
Me: "OK everyone. Next we'll make this into a function so we can simply call it each time-"
Student 1: "It won't work." (student who wouldn't interrupt like this normally)
Student 2: "Mine's broken too!"
Student 3: "It says error. I have the EXACT same thing as you but it's not working."
This makes me feel overloaded and grouchy. Too many questions at once. What I want them to do is wait until the explanation is done and ask when I'm walking around.
@futurebird@sauropods.win I don't know your class or students, and all of this might be stuff you already do or not relevant at all, but here are some things that popped into my mind from my own experiences, in case it's of any use:- Recent CS education research suggests that functions are one of the hardest intro programming concepts for most students, and shouldn't be introduced till some other concepts are mastered first (search "concept inventories for introductory computer programming"). It can help to first practice associative arrays/hashtables/dictionaries. Modularization into functions is harder still. The fact that many of your students are struggling with creating a function might indicate that they haven't mastered the concept yet and you might do well to back up a bit. If they need some remedial work, I cannot praise Parson's puzzles enough
- When running a lab-style section, where students are actively working on something with your support, I think it helps to interleave lecture time, work time, and debrief time. When you lecture, lecture rules (including controlling when interruptions can happen) apply. Work time is when you let interruptions happen more freely as you walk around to see how folks are doing. When I run such things I tell the students at the beginning of the section what the plan is. After a week or two they get it. I think it's useful to keep each work session on the shorter side, 10-15 minutes, with a well-scoped task and well-defined goal, and then have a debrief afterward where students can describe their experience, vent, brag, what have you. That way they know they'll have opportunities to talk and might be less inclined to shout out randomly
- If you don't have assistants to help you, recruiting other students to help field questions can be very effective. In the past I've had success dividing students into pods of 2 or 3, but only after observing the class for a few weeks. I strategically designed each pod to have at least one student who seemed to be on top of the material and another who seemed to be struggling. This setup requires communicating with the students regularly and adjusting the group assignments throughout the course, but it can lighten the load quite a bit, especially after the students get to know each other. I design classes such that the first few weeks are for setting the stage and warming up, and for me to get to know the students
- I've found it can be helpful to tell students some variation of "I know it's frustrating that your code doesn't work. Even today, code I write doesn't usually work the way I want on the first go. This is an experience you're likely to have the rest of your life when writing code. One thing to take away from this course is how not to be set back by this feeling. It's a normal part of the experience of coding, and it's telling us something". If that lands you can follow up by asking them what they think their frustration/struggle/what have you is telling them. The self reflection can be helpful and you can learn important things about your students this way (it can also lead to awesome discussions). Some students react very positively to hearing that this is a normal part of the process (they think there's something wrong with them, or that they are doing something wrong, if they're feeling frustrated).
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Sometimes when you are teaching you need to stop the lecture, change the plan because there is an error in the worksheet, or the problem is too hard.
What's really annoying me is that some students think that when their code doesn't run this is "a problem with the lesson" I should stop everything until we fix it.
But, my lesson is fine. The student just made a typo.
They are so focused on the code running they aren't listening to the lesson which would teach them WHY it's not running.
@futurebird when i was teaching undergrads with lecture sizes of 200-400 students, they were unbelievably effective at writing everything i said down and understanding 1% of it
it wasn't until my third year teaching that i realized they hadn't learned how to learn yet. teaching them how to learn became my job.
i don't know if i succeeded in doing that, but it fundamentally changed my understanding of what education is. it's not teaching coding or philosophy or history - it's teaching how to listen.
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Wanted: Advice from CS teachers
When teaching a group of students new to coding I've noticed that my students who are normally very good about not calling out during class will shout "it's not working!" the moment their code hits an error and fails to run. They want me to fix it right away. This makes for too many interruptions since I'm easy to nerd snipe in this way.
I think I need to let them know that fixing errors that keep the code from running is literally what I'm trying to teach.
@futurebird I inherited/borrowed a system from a veteran computer teacher before me: Provide students with a stack of three cups next to their computer — red, yellow, green. Students could change the stack if they had a problem: green = everything’s OK, yellow = non-urgent question, red = totally stuck. I would wander around helping people who quietly and patiently used their cup signals, and would reset their cups to green after I visited them.
Another expectation was to collaborate and problem-solve with their neighbors first before shouting out or seeking help from me. (And yeah, we had to spend some time defining what “honest collaboration” should look like.)
It wasn’t perfect — there were still noisy shouters — but they learned over time that I wasn’t going to immediately run to them when they got stuck, and that persistence, honest collaboration, and active problem-solving were essential parts of the learning/coding process.
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@jenesuispasgoth Nailed it: "copying without thinking" . @futurebird
@hakona I'm OK with the copying part to be honest (including typos). However, I'm far less OK when it comes to figuring out what went wrong and the students declare that the code isn't working. I used to sit with the students and basically point out the error message, have them read it in full, then if they still didn't get it (remember, English is not their first language), literally copy the message in a search engine to show them how to get the explanation.
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@hakona I'm OK with the copying part to be honest (including typos). However, I'm far less OK when it comes to figuring out what went wrong and the students declare that the code isn't working. I used to sit with the students and basically point out the error message, have them read it in full, then if they still didn't get it (remember, English is not their first language), literally copy the message in a search engine to show them how to get the explanation.
@hakona but this is the 2nd year that students copy the code without using some kind of critical thinking about what it is they're copying, and whether putting an 'i' or an 'l' here makes sense in the context of the program (not even talking about the logic of the program itself).
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Wanted: Advice from CS teachers
When teaching a group of students new to coding I've noticed that my students who are normally very good about not calling out during class will shout "it's not working!" the moment their code hits an error and fails to run. They want me to fix it right away. This makes for too many interruptions since I'm easy to nerd snipe in this way.
I think I need to let them know that fixing errors that keep the code from running is literally what I'm trying to teach.
@futurebird Huh -- I have the opposite problem. Many of my students seem to think, "Everyone understands this but me. I'd better not say anything to avoid embarrassment." This happens even during the part of class when I'm just answering questions.
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Tangentially related:
"AI can write code so why teach how to code?"
"Great point! It can write an essay too, so why teach how to read."
Like. We've had calculators for decades and still teach arithmetic. And functionally the average person needs to know probably more about mathematics and needs to read more than they did a century ago. The same will apply for code.
Now I'm curious about whether LLMs' code compiles and executes error-free on their first attempt.
(Aside from the question of whether it meets requirements, as originally intended; always the hard part).
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Wanted: Advice from CS teachers
When teaching a group of students new to coding I've noticed that my students who are normally very good about not calling out during class will shout "it's not working!" the moment their code hits an error and fails to run. They want me to fix it right away. This makes for too many interruptions since I'm easy to nerd snipe in this way.
I think I need to let them know that fixing errors that keep the code from running is literally what I'm trying to teach.
@futurebird Teach them about and the values of rubber duck debugging. Bonus if you can give them all their own duck, even if it’s just one of these: https://www.ebay.com/itm/389128541552
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@futurebird@sauropods.win I don't know your class or students, and all of this might be stuff you already do or not relevant at all, but here are some things that popped into my mind from my own experiences, in case it's of any use:
- Recent CS education research suggests that functions are one of the hardest intro programming concepts for most students, and shouldn't be introduced till some other concepts are mastered first (search "concept inventories for introductory computer programming"). It can help to first practice associative arrays/hashtables/dictionaries. Modularization into functions is harder still. The fact that many of your students are struggling with creating a function might indicate that they haven't mastered the concept yet and you might do well to back up a bit. If they need some remedial work, I cannot praise Parson's puzzles enough
- When running a lab-style section, where students are actively working on something with your support, I think it helps to interleave lecture time, work time, and debrief time. When you lecture, lecture rules (including controlling when interruptions can happen) apply. Work time is when you let interruptions happen more freely as you walk around to see how folks are doing. When I run such things I tell the students at the beginning of the section what the plan is. After a week or two they get it. I think it's useful to keep each work session on the shorter side, 10-15 minutes, with a well-scoped task and well-defined goal, and then have a debrief afterward where students can describe their experience, vent, brag, what have you. That way they know they'll have opportunities to talk and might be less inclined to shout out randomly
- If you don't have assistants to help you, recruiting other students to help field questions can be very effective. In the past I've had success dividing students into pods of 2 or 3, but only after observing the class for a few weeks. I strategically designed each pod to have at least one student who seemed to be on top of the material and another who seemed to be struggling. This setup requires communicating with the students regularly and adjusting the group assignments throughout the course, but it can lighten the load quite a bit, especially after the students get to know each other. I design classes such that the first few weeks are for setting the stage and warming up, and for me to get to know the students
- I've found it can be helpful to tell students some variation of "I know it's frustrating that your code doesn't work. Even today, code I write doesn't usually work the way I want on the first go. This is an experience you're likely to have the rest of your life when writing code. One thing to take away from this course is how not to be set back by this feeling. It's a normal part of the experience of coding, and it's telling us something". If that lands you can follow up by asking them what they think their frustration/struggle/what have you is telling them. The self reflection can be helpful and you can learn important things about your students this way (it can also lead to awesome discussions). Some students react very positively to hearing that this is a normal part of the process (they think there's something wrong with them, or that they are doing something wrong, if they're feeling frustrated).
I'm kind of shocked that functions are hard. Are they hard for students who understand functions in the context of mathematics?
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Things to Try:
* look for typos
* look at what the error message indicates.If these don't work consider reverting your last changes to the last working version of your code. Then try making the changes again, but be more careful.
If you can't revert the changes, start removing bits of the code systematically. Remove the things you think might cause the error and run the code again. Isolate the change or code that causes the problem.
You can be a great programmer.
2/2
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Wanted: Advice from CS teachers
When teaching a group of students new to coding I've noticed that my students who are normally very good about not calling out during class will shout "it's not working!" the moment their code hits an error and fails to run. They want me to fix it right away. This makes for too many interruptions since I'm easy to nerd snipe in this way.
I think I need to let them know that fixing errors that keep the code from running is literally what I'm trying to teach.
Software developer trainer here.
Silly question, but do they read the *entire* error description? And once they solved it do they understand the relationship between the cause, the message, and the fix?
It might be worthwhile to force them to slow down by asking them to write down the entire message on paper.
Try making a game out of it: Who can generate the strangest error message with the fewest amount of “bad” code.
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My students aren't lazy, but they *can* be a little perfectionist: scared to take risks or sit with not having the answer right away.
They are really upset when their code won't run... but staying calm and *systematically* looking for the cause of the problem, knowing that if you just work through the tree of possible causes you will find it is not something they are good at.
I think I need to teach this.
Maybe I will give them some broken code and we will find the errors together.
When they reach more advanced levels, you will have to teach them to step even farther back, look outside the frame of the monitor, and account for a different layer of the stack.
What if your code works, so well in fact, that it threatens the empires of incumbent elites? What if they break down your door, unperson you, arrest you illegally dozens of times, jail you, brutalize you, deny you legal and medical care, and leave you in pain?
1/n
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Now I'm curious about whether LLMs' code compiles and executes error-free on their first attempt.
(Aside from the question of whether it meets requirements, as originally intended; always the hard part).
"Now I'm curious about whether LLMs' code compiles and executes error-free on their first attempt."
At first it did not, but they have added a routine to run it through a compiler until it at least runs without syntax errors and probably produces output that seems like what you asked for for a limited example of input.
This is a bolted on extra check, not some improvement in the base LLM.
But some people are acting like it does represent advances in the LLM.
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Software developer trainer here.
Silly question, but do they read the *entire* error description? And once they solved it do they understand the relationship between the cause, the message, and the fix?
It might be worthwhile to force them to slow down by asking them to write down the entire message on paper.
Try making a game out of it: Who can generate the strangest error message with the fewest amount of “bad” code.
They are middle school kids totally new to programming so reading the whole thing is a challenge and they will encounter too many words they are still learning.
And really their errors are nearly always typos. Or not putting their function call in main body of the program. Or using a variable they have not defined.
So, for them reading deep isn't that important IMO.
The responses can be very verbose and technical.
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When they reach more advanced levels, you will have to teach them to step even farther back, look outside the frame of the monitor, and account for a different layer of the stack.
What if your code works, so well in fact, that it threatens the empires of incumbent elites? What if they break down your door, unperson you, arrest you illegally dozens of times, jail you, brutalize you, deny you legal and medical care, and leave you in pain?
1/n
How would you regain digital identity, access to your domains, and your money, and get back to doing what you love?
That's what I would like to learn. How to repair a broken body and mind, heal yourself, and go after the systemic injustices that made possible the violence done to a hacker, who could do things the rich and powerful could not? How to fix the system so you won't be bothered on your next coding run, in case your code really works!
It's more fun to compute!
2/2
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"Now I'm curious about whether LLMs' code compiles and executes error-free on their first attempt."
At first it did not, but they have added a routine to run it through a compiler until it at least runs without syntax errors and probably produces output that seems like what you asked for for a limited example of input.
This is a bolted on extra check, not some improvement in the base LLM.
But some people are acting like it does represent advances in the LLM.
@futurebird @david_chisnall In my (very limited) experience, all that resulted in is pseudocode with
//before each line
