I plan, for as long as this newsletter lives, to make the last post of every year a 100-word (or less) summary of each post published earlier that year. Thanks for reading!
In chronological order:
1: Bloom’s 2 sigma problem
Tutoring is highly effective for students’ learning, but it’s not easily scalable, so Benjamin Bloom sought alternative ideas. For example, Mastery Learning (the idea that a student shouldn’t learn Unit 2 before they’ve mastered Unit 1) is pretty effective, but it’s tricky to implement since students progress at different rates. He also demonstrates the effectiveness of teaching “higher mental processes,” which is often found in non-US countries (see #8 below).
2: Drawing for rewards
Education systems often use grades and other extrinsic rewards (e.g., stickers, pizza) to boost student motivation. However, results from studies in psychology suggest that extrinsic rewards can “crowd out” intrinsic motivation; as a result, many believe that extrinsic rewards are required for motivation. Once a reward system is in place, it’s hard to break out of this cycle — Alfie Kohn has written quite a lot about this.
3: Lessons from dog agility
People who pay to learn, outside of traditional classroom settings, often enjoy their experiences while learning. One reason could be that they have intrinsic motivation (see #2), but there could be external, pedagogical reasons as well. For example, dog agility classes contain breaks, social interactions, and physical activity — there’s some evidence that these components are beneficial for learning in general. More broadly, I wonder what aspects of non-traditional learning settings could benefit traditional classroom settings.
4: Alternative grading in algorithms
For better or worse, grading schemes heavily influence students’ experiences, so it’s worthwhile to consider various approaches. This post describes a few things I tried at Elon University that seemed to work reasonably well. One idea I liked is reducing the number of possible outcomes for open-ended problems (e.g., each problem is worth 3 points rather than 20). In my experience, this makes grading more efficient and consistent.
5: Delbanco's three cases for college
“What is the purpose of college?” is a big question, and Andrew Delbanco gives three answers in his book, College: economic investment (both for individuals and nations), democracy (e.g., the Founding Fathers were big fans of education), and liberal arts (e.g., developing one’s mind). In my opinion, it’s nice to have stated goals, even if there’s tension within them.
6: Problem solving vs. career training
In the 1970s, two computer scientists gave two (somewhat competing) visions of an introductory programming course. (Both papers won a SIGCSE “Top Ten Papers of All Time” Award.) David Gries thought CS1 should emphasize problem solving, describing algorithms, and verifying correctness, while G. Michael Schneider was more in favor of teaching students in “realistic programming environments.” Today, many schools have two versions of CS1: one for future CS majors, and one for non-CS majors.
7: Phonics and systematic instruction
CS education hasn’t been debated as much as reading — the “reading wars” have been going on since at least the 1960s. Basically, team “phonics” claims that teachers should explicitly teach the connection between letters and sounds, while team “whole language” claims that teachers should facilitate the discovery of words in picture books and other contexts. My understanding is that phonics has “won,” and I wonder if there are analogous approaches that are similarly effective for teaching other subjects, such as math and CS.
8: The Teaching Gap
This book, published in 1999, describes the differences in math education in the United States, Germany, and Japan. One finding is that the classrooms they studied in Japan tended to focus on “structured problem solving,” while those in the US focused on “learning terms and practicing procedures” (see #1). The differences are roughly analogous to the debate on reading (see #7). My favorite part is their claim that teaching is a cultural activity — I definitely agree, but unfortunately, it makes substantial reform appear difficult.
9: Parsons problems
In a 2008 paper (which also won a SIGCSE award), Paul Denny, Andrew Luxton-Reilly, and Beth Simon proposed adding Parsons problems to CS1 exams. A Parsons problem gives students a programming problem and a set of code fragments, and it asks them to solve the problem by selecting and ordering a subset of the code fragments. The paper suggests that Parsons problems and code writing require the same cognitive skills, but the former are easier to objectively grade and give partial credit.