6 votes

What are good/bad topics for a non-major CS0 course?

Since you've described this a standalone course, I'd treat it as a "computer literacy" sort of thing. I wrote another answer yesterday that got me thinking about what topics everyone should know about ...
Piyush Parikh's user avatar
5 votes

Minecraft to teach programming?

I am not so certain about teaching people to program by starting out with something like modding Minecraft. There are a lot of technical details that someone just learning to program shouldn't be ...
ktb's user avatar
  • 151
4 votes

What are good/bad topics for a non-major CS0 course?

My recommendation is draw from Brian Kernighan's course at Princeton that is designed for a similar audience to what you have. Here is the course material from Fall 2014. A few key lines from the ...
Peter's user avatar
  • 9,092
3 votes

Minecraft to teach programming?

I am currently using Minecraft (especially Minecraft realms) to teach my developers (not starters but folks who have already covered some distance) how to work in team and also to improve their ...
Jay's user avatar
  • 1,884
3 votes

What are good/bad topics for a non-major CS0 course?

I'd really recommend adding some materials on security and cryptography. You don't need to get into the nitty gritty details of how it's implemented. I think that everyone should learn a bit (pun ...
Zach Galant's user avatar
3 votes

How to teach beginning students how to find and fix syntax errors?

I would start by showing them a few natural language examples, where changing one letter in a sentence completely changes the meaning, perhaps into nonsense. Most computer languages respond similarly ...
hotpaw2's user avatar
  • 1,905
1 vote

How to teach beginning students how to find and fix syntax errors?

There are two things you can do (among others). Fixer Upper: Having students finish or repair a program that you create is a useful early exercise. In particular, you can give them a program larger ...
Buffy's user avatar
  • 36.3k
1 vote

Minecraft to teach programming?

First, a caveat: I usually teach software design, and have only taught basic programming to maybe 150 to 200 students. That said, I'm not a huge fan of visual devices in teaching basic program ...
Trixie Wolf's user avatar

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