Questions tagged [student-motivation]

Questions about motivating students to study, participate, or take interest in the field of Computer Science. This tag can be used to ask questions regarding motivating students in the context of Computer Science (e.g. motivating them to self-teach or to work with others etc. as well as motivating them to study Computer Science)

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Searching for algorithms using array, stack, queue, List or no data structure solving interesting problems

rI am a teacher in germany (high school) and I am searching for algorithms, that solve interesting problems using no data structure or linear data structures only. The goal is to motivate the students ...
BenBar's user avatar
  • 21
0 votes
3 answers
1k views

What is the best programming language to learn right now? [closed]

A CS student here. My school is teaching only Java, and I figured I should pick up another language on my own. What would you say is the best programming language to learn right now in this market?
vien._t's user avatar
  • 25
2 votes
1 answer
97 views

What are some good conditional branching excercise scenarios?

I want to get my students to exercise the conditional-branching mind-muscle. [edit: and I need it to be fun/playful] I will ask them to read pseudo-code, then represent as a branching sketch[^1]. And ...
Vladimir's user avatar
  • 123
6 votes
4 answers
154 views

Curriculum for a primary school learner

My niece is 11 this year and has shown a surprisingly deep interest in programming. She will spend hours on Khan Academy, using their javascript/processingjs environment. This is educational, but it's ...
Joshua Frank's user avatar
13 votes
17 answers
4k views

What are some fun projects for non-CS majors?

I'm teaching an undergrad Intro to Programming for Non-majors this semester (in Python) and I'm looking for some fun projects for my students that are engaging but not too difficult for them. This is ...
Levon's user avatar
  • 371
0 votes
0 answers
48 views

How to take PHP junior developers to senior level

I am involved in a website project, where main implementation language is PHP. Main development is done by two full-time developers, who lack a lot of understanding about program architecture and ...
Tero Kilkanen's user avatar
5 votes
3 answers
149 views

Is it OK to use "informal" systems such as TeamSpeak or Discord to support classes?

Like many of you, in the last weeks, I've been forced to move to distance teaching/learning. While our university has always suggested us to use Zoom, from the first moment, several students said that ...
Nuno Gil Fonseca's user avatar
1 vote
1 answer
58 views

Suggested fliers for high school career fair?

I will be tabling at a high school career fair and would like to have printed fliers about careers involving computer science. Does anyone know where I can find ones that are free (either to print or ...
Ellen Spertus's user avatar
1 vote
1 answer
89 views

How to make someone enjoy programming if they don't like the products they make? [duplicate]

Background I have a friend who loves applied math and physics, but hates programming. She is learning python right now because she thinks it's helpful in getting a math-related job, and her mom forces ...
Coco Liliace's user avatar
0 votes
1 answer
104 views

What is the best approach to learning things in CS? [closed]

What's the best approach to learning a library, framework etc.I find it overwhelming initially as to where should I start learn such things. Is it like you start taking up a course and then try to ...
Fasty's user avatar
  • 169
4 votes
5 answers
338 views

How do you wow second-year students into saying "bare-metal programming is cool!"?

Next semester I will be TAing a computer organization/assembly language course. I will be full-fledgedly (co-)teaching the lab. The first lab will take place before the first lecture, so me and the ...
JohnnyApplesauce's user avatar
0 votes
2 answers
102 views

Simple, Compact, Rounded Definition of the term "Programming Construct"

A younger friend of mine, a high school student I have been encouraging to take his Computer Studies class seriously, and possibly go for CS in tertiary education, brought this problem to me. He was ...
Mallam Awal's user avatar
0 votes
0 answers
61 views

Software tool as in Bret Victor's demo

Already last year I encountered the great http://worrydream.com/LearnableProgramming/ and it was much needed fresh air (while I was suffocating in my provided "textbooks": cobbled collections of ...
user9137's user avatar
  • 434
3 votes
1 answer
66 views

Any relevant research in Motivation?

I came across another reference to how CS education does not produce bimodal grade distributions etc. Also re-read some stuff about gender issues, that women are not mentored and supported and so on. ...
Scott Rowe's user avatar
2 votes
3 answers
215 views

Classification of programming exercises

I wondered what attempts were made to classify programming exercises for students in their learning path, just like taxonomy in biology. For example : A "concept covered" criteria from generic to ...
jy95's user avatar
  • 121
3 votes
1 answer
144 views

What is the closest pair problem useful for?

The closest pair problem is the famous problem of finding out the closest pair of points given an arbitrary set of points on a plane. This problem has a divide and conquer algorithm and often is used ...
Agnishom Chattopadhyay's user avatar
3 votes
2 answers
166 views

Recent Graduate becomes a teacher

In less than one month I'll be graduating from the equivalent of high school (I'm in Latvia). In my high school you also get a certificate based on which career you choose eg. a Chef or a Computer ...
Relinkvent's user avatar
6 votes
9 answers
3k views

What are some good problems which can be solved with a queue?

I am trying to introduce the idea of stacks and queues in a course on data structures. For stacks, my idea was to show some interesting examples of problems, like evaluating an expression in RPN, or ...
Agnishom Chattopadhyay's user avatar
1 vote
1 answer
52 views

What technique should be used to make video tutorial for BS(CS) students?

For students, there are a lot of different tasks which are given by their lecturer. One of the task is that to make a professional video tutorial of specific topic which is related to Computer ...
Maryam Abbas's user avatar
0 votes
2 answers
265 views

How to make perfect documentation of FYP with less plagiarism?

For a student of BS(CS), a supervisor wants documentation of final year project with high vocabulary and with less plagiarism, but the students write documentations on their own, without copying paste ...
Maryam Abbas's user avatar
0 votes
5 answers
290 views

Through what basic programming language can beginners easily get the concept of programming? [duplicate]

I have some students that are from medical background and have no concept of programming. So, which language I should teach to them to make their basic concept of programming perfect?
hina munir's user avatar
3 votes
2 answers
370 views

How to make students confident enough to stop copying each other's code assignment?

Mostly students can't code or they are not interested or they become lazy in their work or they are not confident enough to make their own logic and check it before teacher. For all these students ...
Maryam Abbas's user avatar
-1 votes
2 answers
104 views

how can i build up interest in learning some dry but important subjects of BS(CS)?

As a student we didn't have interest in every subject of computer science because some of these subjects have different domains of learning. But in case if you have didn't properly done with one ...
Kiran Zahoor's user avatar
4 votes
3 answers
163 views

how to motivate student that programming will give bright future to them?

some students in my class are leaving CS because programming is difficult and think that it will not give them bright future. how to motivate that students, that their interest is develop in ...
hina munir's user avatar
6 votes
3 answers
524 views

How do I deal with students being unkind to each other when I'm not there?

The faculty and students at my small minority-serving institution think of our environment as being supportive and cooperative. This is very important in CS, since programming is a team sport, and ...
Embarrassed tenured professor's user avatar
3 votes
1 answer
78 views

What teaching techniques can be used, in teaching students from a medical background, to improve their programming?

Students from premedical background feel difficulty in programming. They have no basic concepts of programming, so they are unable to do good programming. I have searched but didn't get any solution ...
hina munir's user avatar
5 votes
1 answer
264 views

How do you teach Theory of Automata / Formal Language Theory / Computation Complexity?

i'm a new instructor & also new here. How do you teach Theory of Automata / Formal Language Theory / Computation Complexity? Is it theory only, or including programming? If theory only, how ...
kate's user avatar
  • 153
4 votes
4 answers
502 views

How can I improve my understanding in Computer Science?

I am new to Computer Sciences, working as machine learning engineer. I only know the basics of programming. How can I improve my technical comprehension so that I will be able solve different ...
Fasty's user avatar
  • 169
6 votes
3 answers
150 views

Making induction meaningful

I've been teaching inductive proofs of code correctness to high school students for three years now, and the instruction has steadily improved. Many of the students come in not having done inductive ...
Ben I.'s user avatar
  • 32.6k
4 votes
9 answers
2k views

Why some students think that programming is difficult and hard to learn, how I convince my students that programming is not difficult as they think?

Some students think that programming courses are tough and hard. I personally know some teachers who say to their students that programming is not their cup of tea. How much percent this thing is true ...
Marosh Fatima's user avatar
8 votes
6 answers
346 views

Learning disabilities as a barrier - should I stop learning?

I am not a teacher. I'm an adult with learning disabilities. I have autism and memory problems. As a child, I was way behind and stuck in SLD, where the teachers had little interest in teaching, so ...
Ron Swartz 's user avatar
4 votes
2 answers
265 views

Improve motivation in the final part of a project based course

Fellow educators, I am teaching a project based course composed of two parts. The first half of the course focuses on basic concepts and activities that serve as preparation for the second half where ...
igordsm's user avatar
  • 680
5 votes
8 answers
656 views

Explaining why arrays are important for statisticians

I am a computer engineer, and I’m teaching computer sciences one hour per week to a student who failed her second-year university degree. She needed some help to have a better understanding of ...
Med's user avatar
  • 153
4 votes
4 answers
179 views

How to gamify the learning management system

I have been reading up on how to shift more of my teaching resources on to the Learning Management System, to make it easier to access from other locations even though I mostly teach in a classroom. ...
Scott Rowe's user avatar
8 votes
2 answers
213 views

Methods for engaging students when teaching unpopular or unfashionable topics

The world is full of computing technologies that have been put to productive use but may be unpopular or unfashionable with students today due to their complexity, their lack of support, limited ...
Adam J Limbert's user avatar
6 votes
4 answers
383 views

Study Advice for a CS Student

It's my second year in my computer science degree, 2nd semester. I feel like I am still not good enough and not satisfied with myself! I still can't program and when I have a task I can't think. I ...
Elsayegh88's user avatar
7 votes
6 answers
382 views

Courage to Attack Difficult Questions

In a recent blog post Eugene Wallingford says that when teaching: I frequently pose a problem for them to work on for a few minutes before we look at a solution, or several candidates, as a group. ...
Buffy's user avatar
  • 35.7k
2 votes
3 answers
206 views

How can Chatbots be useful in CS education?

I am reading this book published ten years ago and it says that chatbots can be very useful in helping students with course details and to break the ice. I am not familiar with chatbots, so I have ...
user5342's user avatar
7 votes
3 answers
3k views

What are the pedagogical methods for teaching programming?

This is a very objective question. I want to know what are the methods for teaching programing? I'll provide a parallel example to make this clearer in case this causes any confusion. I have ...
Thobias Cerqueira's user avatar
5 votes
5 answers
212 views

How can we best inform potential students of the nature of CS?

Recent questions deal with the problem of too many applicants to CS programs, both in High School and University. Yes, this is a problem when only a smaller number can be accommodated for reasons of ...
Buffy's user avatar
  • 35.7k
57 votes
27 answers
19k views

How to teach a person to enjoy programming?

I've been teaching programming to my 13-year old son for over a year now. I'm not satisfied with his progress. I think that one of the reasons is his attitude: He wants to learn programming (he said ...
Glory to Russia's user avatar
53 votes
12 answers
8k views

What are healthy, productive ways to encourage students to progress to more advanced constructs as opposed to staying with the familiar?

In my experience, there are always students who are resistant to moving to more advanced constructs. They want to stay with what they already know. For example, when they are taught arrays, they ...
Java Jive's user avatar
  • 2,349
2 votes
3 answers
616 views

The Fifth Element or What Elements Are Correlated With CS Success and Does It Matter? [closed]

After a long search a colleague says that the only 'predictor' of computing ability seems to be Autism, and that only with a low correlation (60%, whatever that means). But in our experience of ...
user4333's user avatar
6 votes
6 answers
345 views

How do teachers motivate students to persevere and learn?

One primary issue I have as an Instructor is increasing student motivation. For me, there are only two motivations in life: Because I enjoy it Because I need to earn a living Reason #2 is ...
user4284's user avatar
6 votes
4 answers
271 views

Answering “How is this useful to me?”

When I am teaching, sometimes, I am asked “How is this useful to me? I don't use a computer. I won't use a computer in my job.” How can I, quickly, answer this question? I only have a few pupils ...
ctrl-alt-delor's user avatar
4 votes
3 answers
181 views

Encourage students to learn and use advanced design

I mentor an FRC (FIRST Robotics Competition) team, and they program in java. The team members who work programming the robot are using an extension1 library which they themselves write. The library ...
ItamarG3's user avatar
  • 6,287
6 votes
4 answers
1k views

Motivation for learning C++ when you know Java

I am going to teach a C++ course to students who already know Java. From answers to my previous question, I learned that C++ is substantially harder to master than Java, particularly because of the ...
Erel Segal-Halevi's user avatar
4 votes
2 answers
521 views

Is it possible to study too many things in parallel?

Unfortunately I did not study well at school, I was not interested in many things, and I did not understand that things. But I have matured, interests have become more. I am now 20 years old. Now I ...
Islomkhodja Hamidullakhodjaev's user avatar
6 votes
4 answers
234 views

Explaining the Value of Knowledge of Digital Logic

I am a college teacher developing an introduction to digital logic for grades 8-12. This is a special topic that will be presented in three 50-minute periods with in-class exercises. It won't go ...
Bob Brown's user avatar
  • 409
4 votes
4 answers
197 views

Engagement advice on Creative computing

I'm preparing a course for next year, aimed at kids from ~6-16. It's based around the concept of creative computing: http://scratched.gse.harvard.edu/guide/index.html I think it will be a great ...
Dani's user avatar
  • 141