Lecture 4

Lecture 4, Fri 10/26

Assisting students on Programming Assignments (Diba)

Goal

The goal of this lecture is to allow you to have an authentic experience of “a student in the class” working on a programming assignment. We will simulate the experience of students and tutors in lab sections and discuss effective ways of helping students when they get stuck on programming assignments.

Lesson plan

Bring your laptop to class
We will use one of the programming projects in CS8 as the basis for this lecture. Here is a link to the lab writeup: CS8 Forest lab
Starter code for the project is available at this repo: https://github.com/ucsb-cs190j-s18/lec05-starter-code
Divide into two groups as per the assignements below and follow the instructions provided

Group A (CS8 Students)

Matthew, Andrew, G, Diego, Yifan

Group A assume the role of students in the class. In the next 20-40 minutes, you should try to get as far as you can with the assignment (by actually doing it) until you get stuck. When you do write your question on the sheet given to you and then raise your hand. A “tutor” will come to you for help. After you had the interaction, write down your observations about the interaction - specifically what did the tutor do? Did the tutor answer your question adequately? Write any other observations that we can later discuss, then proceed with completing the rest of the assignment until you get stuck again. As you do the assignment, try to put yourself in the shoes of the student as much as possible.

Group B (Tutors)

Keith, Andrew Z, Annan Z, Patrick

Group B assume the role of tutors. In the next 20-40 minutes, do what you normally do to prepare for your lab sections keeping in mind that this time the instructor made the lab available in the last hour and you have limited time. In an ideal world you would have done this preparation at least a day in advance of the actual lab. Assume you are in the actual lab, so be prepared to help students as soon as you get the first question. Conduct yourself as you normally do in the labs. After your interaction, take a few moments to write down your observations - What was the students question? How did you respond? Did you use a specific strategy - what was it?
We will take a break to discuss your observations from this activity and go over the tips in this handout
We will then play one more round!