August 19, 2004
Starting the semester
Class start this Monday, August 23, 2004, at Mary Washington College of the University of Mary Washington - we all know it's not the best or even a good name for the U, but it's what it is.
It's what I do for a living, it's my life's work, and (occasionally) an all-encompassing passion. Still, with a really enjoyable summer behind me, there's a reluctance to get fully engaged before the classes start.
I decided to spend some time thinking about my teaching - with only paper and pen handy. After I got real comfortable in the hammock outdoors, I eventually came up the thought that what I ought to be doing is
teaching students what they need to know rather than what I think they should learn
The point I'm making is that the courses should be project or problem oriented. Trying to get students involved in the basic principles and technologies by setting tasks they need to accomplish and/or problems they need to solve. This needs to be done within the context of a body of knowledge, for several reasons:
- Students need a grounding framework they can work within. They need resources that can help them feel that they are on a stable, but not restrictive, path.
- Having a context will make it more reasonable to provide examination/testing/evaluation mechanisms.
- We don't need to pretend that the body of knowledge doesn't exist. It should be acknowledged
To start with in
- CPSC 104 - The Internet: Technology, Information, and Issues We're going to be working with a blog. The idea here is that the students will be immediately presented with a task of putting something on the Web. Since the course is also writing intensive, this blog will provide on outlet for the student's writing.
- CPSC 220 - Computer Science I On the first day, since we have a lab period, students will have to develop an algorithm, and then implement a solution to the problem of finding the largest of three input values. The algorithm should not be too difficult, but entering the program and compiling it may be a challenge for some.
- CPSC 321 - Advanced Data Structures Here students will be asked to examine an implementation, in Java the language for the course which they most likely don't know, of a binary search algorithm. They should be familiar with the algorithm. Then they have to determine a precise count of the maximum number of probes to determine an element isn't in the list. This determination needs to be accompanied by a reasoned exposition of how they developed the statement of the maximum number of probes into an ordered set of N items. Then they'll have to write a program to perform the calculation indicated by the formula/expression they derive.
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