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Students seen flocking in programming assignments

Author:

Tony GreeningAuthors Info & Claims

ACM SIGCSE Bulletin, Volume 32, Issue 3

Pages 93 - 96

https://doi.org/10.1145/353519.343091

Published: 13 July 2000 Publication History

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Abstract

Programming assignments are typically constructed with great precision, in order to ensure that students traverse the important content areas in the unit. This paper makes a case for an "ill-defined", large programming task by presenting experiences with an assignment based on flocking behavior. Providing students meet the criteria that their artificial life forms clearly exhibit flocking behavior, they become responsible for defining the exact nature of the task. The success of this approach is partly measured by the ability of novice programmers who fully engage with the course material to produce spectacular results. The paper includes a discussion of the philosophical requirements for adopting such an approach within a programming unit.

References

[1]

Ben-Ari, M., 1998. Constructivism in computer science education. In Proceedings of the 29th SIGCSE Technical Symposium on Computer Science Education (SIGCSE'98), pp. 257-261.

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[2]

Fekete, A., Greening, T., & Kingston, J.H., 1998. Conveying technical content in a curriculum using problem-based learning. Proceedings of the 3rd Australasian Conference on Computer Science Education (A CSE'98), pp. 198-202.

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[3]

Greening, T., Kay, J., Kingston, J.H., & Crawford, K., 1996. Problem-based learning of computer science. In Proceedings of the 1~t Australasian Conference on Computer Science Education (A CSE '96), pp. 13-18.

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[4]

Greening, T., 1998. Scaffolding for success in problem-based learning. Medical Education Online, 3(4), I-15, {Online}. Available: http.'//www, utmb. edu/meo/

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[5]

Greening, T., 1999. Emerging constructivist forces in computer science education: shaping a new future? In T. Greening (Ed.), Computer Science Education in the 21st Century, pp.47-80. Springer-Verlag: New York.

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Index Terms

Students seen flocking in programming assignments
1. Social and professional topics
  1. Professional topics
    1. Computing education
      1. Computing education programs
        Computer science education
        Information science education
2. Software and its engineering
  1. Software notations and tools
    1. General programming languages
      1. Language features

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Published In

ACM SIGCSE Bulletin Volume 32, Issue 3

Sept. 2000

229 pages

ISSN:0097-8418

DOI:10.1145/353519

Editor:
John Impagliazzo
Hofstra Univ., Hempstead, New York

Issue’s Table of Contents

ITiCSE '00: Proceedings of the 5th annual SIGCSE/SIGCUE ITiCSEconference on Innovation and technology in computer science education
July 2000
197 pages
ISBN:1581132077
DOI:10.1145/343048
Chairmen:
Jorma Tarhio
Univ. of Joensuu, Joensuu,Finland
,
Sally Fincher
Univ. of Kent at Canterbury, Canterbury, UK
,
Daniel Joyce
Villanova Univ., Villanova, PA

Permission to make digital or hard copies of all or part of this work for personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. Copyrights for components of this work owned by others than ACM must be honored. Abstracting with credit is permitted. To copy otherwise, or republish, to post on servers or to redistribute to lists, requires prior specific permission and/or a fee. Request permissions from [email protected]

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Association for Computing Machinery

New York, NY, United States

Publication History

Published: 13 July 2000

Published in SIGCSE Volume 32, Issue 3

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