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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Is there some meaningful percentage of students who can't learn to program?
A few days ago, I had a high school sophomore (who is now in her third CS class, having passed the prior two) look at this Java code for a solid 3-5 minutes, and was unable to figure out what it did:
<...
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How to answer "functional programming is useless"?
I'm a TA for several Bachelor level functional programming courses at my university. In every edition we have problems with some students that have the idea that functional programming is useless, ...
user24
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25
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How to convey how much computing power has grown since the 1960s?
I was born in 1968 and used dial-up to mainframes back before PCs were available. We got an Apple ][+ when they came out and thought 48K was a lot of memory.
I live in constant wonder at the world ...
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27
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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 ...
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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 ...
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How to respond when students ask "is recursion good practice"?
Context: CS1-style, intro programming class, using an interpreted language (Python).
I will get a hand raised asking "Why are we learning recursion? Is it good programming practice?"
My response is ...
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14
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How do you encourage students to take criticism of their code constructively?
How do you encourage students to benefit from code reviews you give them, rather than being discouraged or responding defensively?
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13
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Problematic student at a very high level
I teach a high school student who has already developed an understanding of the language used in my curriculum and causes difficulties. The lectures and programming projects in the curriculum bore ...
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9
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How to tell a student that s/he should enroll in a different program?
Through the years I had several students that clearly were not fitted for computer science. Some of them ended up by dropping the program after a few years, some of them are still there struggling ...
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Do you see the "Bimodal Distribution" too?
When people learn programming in a school setting, tests show a "two hump" tendency. Some students race ahead and grasp it relatively well and others struggle. Apparently this is more pronounced in ...
user737
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Dealing with students who are overly motivated
Occasionally I have students who are 'overmotivated': they put way too much effort in to trying to memorize every word of the textbook, every idea, each diagram I draw... They spend all of their off ...
user737
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What can the instructor do to overcome the Authenticity Bias in students?
A recent Blog post by Eugene Wallingford raises the issue that students often perform according to their perception of their abilities rather than their actual abilities. If a student performs better ...
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Uses of high school Computer Science: where can it lead other than university CS?
We are trying to get more pupils doing computer science in years 10→11 (UK GCSE) (14→15 years old) and years 12→13 (UK A-level) (16→17years old).
As there are a lot of university educators around ...
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How can I determine if a student would enjoy or has an aptitude for CS?
I'm a developer with a little CS teaching history, and I have a nephew who enjoys math (Algebra-Calculus) quite a bit in high school. Because of this, I feel like he should at least try computer ...
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How do I scaffold students toward building meaningful projects?
Teaching 8th graders using App Inventor through Project Lead the Way's ICS 1 curriculum.
I am interested in moving the students towards a deeper understanding of the power of CS to improve people ...
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17
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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 ...
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How do you make your CS lectures more interesting?
My biggest challenge each semester is keeping students engaged in class. It's obvious that most of them would rather be somewhere else. I don't know if it's the students, my lecture, or both. I wish I ...
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Why did interest in CS majors plummet in the United States after the mid-80s?
As shown by the following graph, the percentage of U.S. college students earning bachelor's degrees in CS peaked in 1986, with the percent of freshmen planning to major in CS peaking for the classes ...
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8
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Dealing with students who are underly-motivated
Occasionally I have students who are 'under-motivated': they put way too little effort in to trying to memorize any of the textbook, any idea, each diagram I draw. I used to think that perhaps some ...
user737
10
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4
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How to motivate game design/development students to do more than the minimum on homework
I'm a teaching assistant for the upper level under-graduate courses for Game Design and Development at my University, and the professor and I are having a hard time finding a way to motivate students ...
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4
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Can sharing learning stats be beneficial to guide beginner students?
Context
The main consensus in most compsci programs I have been at is that a sizable amount of students is inherently unable to learn how to code. An old entry on Jeff Atwood's blog summarizing the ...
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10
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How to overcome the TDD/BDD time fallacy
I've observed an unusual thing happen when teachers try to introduce Test-Driven Development (TDD) or Behavior-Driven Development (BDD) to their classes. Even though the teachers invariably encourage ...
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6
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Paper Books or eBooks?
The majority of my students are finally becoming internet equipped. (This is kind of a big deal here in India). Whenever I start a new session, students ask me to recommend a textbook for them. I use ...
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6
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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 ...
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4
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Making Technical Presentations Safe for Novices
One useful skill in CS is presentation of technical material to peers and/or superiors. Novices, however, often come to computing as introverts for whom public speaking is difficult and even ...
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3
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Gifted Student Presentations
In working with a gifted student, I would like to set up an opportunity for him to learn some material and present it to the class. How could such an activity be structured so that the presentation ...
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2
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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 ...
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2
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Teaching interaction design to potentially disinterested students
Background: I will be a teaching assistant in a course on "Interactive Systems" with the following learning goals for the students.
Analyze and criticize user interfaces
Identify and describe ...
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7
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6
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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. ...
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How can I maintain interest in front end?
When I teach front end web development, it always happens that I start the year with a bunch of students who are ready to redesign Facebook on day 1. With expectations like that, it's always a letdown ...
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How do you structure broad, open-ended, freely chosen projects so that students use class time wisely?
If we are to believe Daniel Pink, autonomy is one of the fundamental aspects of motivation, so integrating student choice is extremely valuable if I want my students to remain highly engaged.
I ...
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3
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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 ...
7
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4
answers
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Giving Students a Break
My instruction time has specified breaks, but often the students do not take them, even if I urge them to. This results in them working and listening to my instruction while they are overdone. I tell ...
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2
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Peanut Butter and Jelly Ending
Peanut Butter and Jelly Ending
I have a task that I started with a group of 4th-6th graders at the beginning of a short course on Artificial Intelligence. In order to demonstrate how exact computers ...
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Working on practical projects as a team - good or bad?
We are trying to implement a course where students develop web apps using PHP+AgileUI (no HTML, JavaScript or CSS) with a strong emphasis on "object oriented" approach, designing business logic and ...
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2
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In-class server access limits
I want to set up a fully functional web server in the classroom. I will be using a separate computer provisioned with Apache, MySQL, Tomcat, PHP, Perl, etc. I want to have each student in the class ...
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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 ...
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4
answers
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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 ...
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4
answers
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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 ...
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6
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6
answers
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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 ...
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3
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Using microcontrollers in an Introductory course
Are there any advantages to using small microcontrollers (such as an Arduino, etc.) with tactile, physical I/O (such as buttons, LEDs, robotic actuators, etc.)? For instance, does it help create more ...
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4
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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 ...
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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 ...
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3
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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 ...
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4
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Answering student questions as they work outside class
If your students are like mine, they do a lot of their work outside my view; at home, on weekends, etc. But as they work they sometimes get stuck. They get questions for which they need the answers in ...
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3
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What are good models for an Honors Program for CS students?
One way to extend the reach of your best students is to have an Honors Program that, perhaps, runs over several years.
One model is to have a special program to which students are invited. ...
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4
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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 ...
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3
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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 ...
5
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8
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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 ...
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Finishing College with Employable Skills
Last week, 4 students from another college approached me with a scenario. They have a year of college left in them. That means, they will be occupied with all sorts of final year things that may and ...
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