Re: Testing teaching belief?

[weberwu@compute.tfh-berlin.de (Debora Weber-Wulff)]

Richard A. O'Keefe (ok@goanna.cs.rmit.edu.au) wrote:

: But the issue under question is not "whether to emphasise keywords or not"
: but "whether to distinguish keywords by making them upper case or by
: making them lower case".  It's precisely a teacher who *DOES* believe that
: distinguishing keywords is important, but has an open mind about the best
: way to do it, that we want.  I agree that "whether to emphasise keywords
: or not" is an important question, but it is a *different* question from
: the one I'm asking.  Let's spell it out:

I use the following rule in teaching Ada:
1) Thou shalt differentiate keywords and identifiers.
2) Thou shalt be consistent.

So I take off oints for mixing schemes, but let everyone do what
they want, as long as it is the same. In Software Engineering I make
the students state in a coding style sheet which style they will use.

In class, I tend to pass out copies of Feldman's programs (slightly
altered to get around that terrible US-centric touch ;-) using his
style. I thought it was ugly at first, but it grows on you - I've
used both his books (the CS1 and the CS2 one) now.

: [When I commented on the US-centric bias of this book before, I hadn't read
: chapter 2 in detail.  It's _very_ strong in chapter 2.]

: This may look like an attack on Feldman's book.  I hasten to point out that
: the reason I picked it for comment here is that I *have* it, and I needed a
: *good* book to make my point.

Must say he has GREAT exercies and EXPLAINS stuff at a level of detail that
actually sinks in - I have the feeling that the students are actually
learning something... 'course I can't prove this experimentally, but
just the same :-)

: -- 
: Mixed Member Proportional---a *great* way to vote!
: Richard A. O'Keefe; http://www.cs.rmit.edu.au/%7Eok; RMIT Comp.Sci.

--
Debora Weber-Wulff (Professorin fuer Softwaretechnik und Programmiersprachen)
Technische Fachhochschule Berlin, FB Informatik, Luxemburger Str. 10, 
13353 Berlin, Germany        email: weberwu@tfh-berlin.de   
<http://www.tfh-berlin.de/~weberwu/>