Scratch

Hello!

I am a software developer (intern) associated with the ROSE project:

www.rosecompiler.org

and I am interested in improving programming pedagogical methods specifically with regards to higher education and non-CS majors.

It took me a while to agree with the concept of Scratch. I was biased against it because, well, I learned C++ and was unreasonably biased towards languages used in industry. I began an exploration into teaching programming to college students and found that several concepts that I found trivial were extremely difficult for them.

Currently I am focusing on teaching for loops and the student's learning pattern. In this research I utilize video information from sessions and try and understand the learning process.

I have read many papers in teaching non-CS-major college students programming, but have found the majority of them to be focused on grade improvement or some numerical metric indicative of understanding.

This method serves a purpose but I believe to improve teaching methods we must understand the students on many levels as they are learning. Rather than before and after tests seeking confirmation by better grades, I seek to understand how they are learning and what their understanding of concepts consists of.

I believe it was diSessa and Schoenfeld who spoke of fragile conceptions which do not lend themselves to deep learning but rather shallow learning which does not hold up to further exploration and can lead to propagated fragility when examined further or pulling back into the big picture.

Wow that's long... amazing patience to those who made it through it 

operaBaritone