tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1685560256628587439.post546611491117315084..comments2023-07-10T07:12:16.641-04:00Comments on The Female Perspective of Computer Science: Encouraging Students to Make Mistakes and Learn How to DebugGail Carmichaelhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14173555781667297996noreply@blogger.comBlogger4125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1685560256628587439.post-89730086549102382292013-08-06T00:29:33.087-04:002013-08-06T00:29:33.087-04:00I like the idea of credit recovery, but it's n...I like the idea of credit recovery, but it's not quite the same thing as getting it right on the first time. I think it's an important distinguishing factor.<br />The points for fixing bugs also suggests the processing of assignments would have to run through two passes, so the workload for the TAs would have to be compensated for in some fashion. Perhaps a system whereby students have the opportunity to take their marked work back to the TA and demonstrate their understanding of what went wrong and how they fixed it in exchange for partial mark recovery for that part of the assigned work.<br />Another thing to address is the sharing of answers. Once the marking comes out and some students find out their answers were right and others were wrong, that settles the issue when questions contained some ambiguous information that couldn't or wouldn't be resolved by the prof or TA. If some of the students who get it wrong can just get the right answer from those who get it right and reimplement the correct solution, they haven't necessarily learned the how and why of what made one answer right and the other wrong. This may be mitigated to some extent if you have to demonstrate to the TA the differences between your first and second submissions and explain a walkthrough of what was wrong and how it was fixed.<br />It's certainly a bit of a complicated problem to figure out, but there's definitely some merit to incentivizing the fixing of mistakes instead of simply moving on with the next batch of material.Olihttps://www.blogger.com/profile/15208552993437798014noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1685560256628587439.post-28613866753423908302013-08-05T21:49:46.626-04:002013-08-05T21:49:46.626-04:00I've been thinking about this a lot lately... ...I've been thinking about this a lot lately... probably because I'm also a recovering perfectionist. :)<br /><br />I think the emphasis on grade and answers being either right or wrong and you lose points contributes to this. Maybe something along the lines decreasing the grade penalty for errors would help? Something about you can get full credit if you can find the bug and explain how it happened and how to fix it?E.S. Ivyhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/03383101940119217811noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1685560256628587439.post-85104285537544961042013-07-25T14:14:03.054-04:002013-07-25T14:14:03.054-04:00go through an assignment afterwards and either com...go through an assignment afterwards and either combine a few together so you get the common errors, and then spend time going through it in class fixing them?<br /><br />Give them an assignment/lab with a program that is already coded. Make them fix the errors in it.<br />-Show them how multiple different ways of doing something could lead to bugs. - the need to think things through, how doing A affects B and C, but not doing affects D etc.A Studenthttps://www.blogger.com/profile/11774887839718380522noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1685560256628587439.post-47593134743539618622013-07-25T14:12:24.005-04:002013-07-25T14:12:24.005-04:00Rails for Zombies @ Code School forces students to...Rails for Zombies @ Code School forces students to make mistakes by offering guidance only after you have made an attempt on your own. <br /><br />Daniel C. Dennett has a great discussion of the importance of making mistakes in his excellent new book Intuition Pumps. <br />Anonymoushttps://www.blogger.com/profile/04150557437891409675noreply@blogger.com