something I've been thinking about is how, when I teach a class, I tell the TAs to never, ever touch the keyboard when they're helping a student with an assignment.
-
something I've been thinking about is how, when I teach a class, I tell the TAs to never, ever touch the keyboard when they're helping a student with an assignment. not even once! because as soon as someone else is driving, it becomes real easy for the student to stop thinking and just let things happen.
kind of like what happens when we use a coding assistant.
@regehr i wonder how much of this is because students don't really want to be there, and how much is because they don't (yet?) know how to zealously fight for understanding
-
@regehr i wonder how much of this is because students don't really want to be there, and how much is because they don't (yet?) know how to zealously fight for understanding
@whitequark @regehr well I think it’s also quite easy to overestimate how well you understand something if you’re not forced to recreate it from scratch
kinda like that study where people knew what a bicycle looked like but not how to draw one
-
@whitequark @regehr well I think it’s also quite easy to overestimate how well you understand something if you’re not forced to recreate it from scratch
kinda like that study where people knew what a bicycle looked like but not how to draw one
@jyn @whitequark @regehr Regarding coding assistant: I guess this is only true if you assume the assistant is better than you.
-
@whitequark @regehr well I think it’s also quite easy to overestimate how well you understand something if you’re not forced to recreate it from scratch
kinda like that study where people knew what a bicycle looked like but not how to draw one
-
@jyn @whitequark @regehr Regarding coding assistant: I guess this is only true if you assume the assistant is better than you.
@wiedmama @whitequark @regehr I don’t like the framing of programming as a linear scale from bad to good. AI can legitimately be good at creating prototypes while being bad at ongoing maintenance. being better than a single person in a single dimension isn’t that hard.
-
@regehr i wonder how much of this is because students don't really want to be there, and how much is because they don't (yet?) know how to zealously fight for understanding
@whitequark for sure there's a lot going on!
-
@whitequark @regehr I don’t disagree, but by that standard I think very few people in the world live up to your standard of “zealous”
-
@wiedmama @whitequark @regehr I don’t like the framing of programming as a linear scale from bad to good. AI can legitimately be good at creating prototypes while being bad at ongoing maintenance. being better than a single person in a single dimension isn’t that hard.
@wiedmama @whitequark @regehr also like, half the way you get good at programming is by struggling with problems until you understand them better
-
@whitequark @regehr I don’t disagree, but by that standard I think very few people in the world live up to your standard of “zealous”
-
@wiedmama @whitequark @regehr also like, half the way you get good at programming is by struggling with problems until you understand them better
@jyn @wiedmama @whitequark @regehr ding ding ding
-
something I've been thinking about is how, when I teach a class, I tell the TAs to never, ever touch the keyboard when they're helping a student with an assignment. not even once! because as soon as someone else is driving, it becomes real easy for the student to stop thinking and just let things happen.
kind of like what happens when we use a coding assistant.
@regehr a friend and I gave a free python programming course once and followed it up with a paid course (with exceptions for anyone that couldn't afford it)
The free course was attend by kids with a real curiousity, whereas in the paid course we found many students that took the course because their parents thought it was a good idea. Though I'm entirely for that in some instances, I did find that several of them didn't engage as much with the course work.
I teach by asking reflective questions, explaining fundamentals and nudging, surely much to the frustration of the student, but ultimately those aha moments are more powerful when you come to them from your own side.
Further to this, I found the fear of failure, not to "break" things, and not to be "wrong" prevented several of the kids from making steady progress.
In the end I know of at least two of these students that pursued programming, with one actually studying CompSci

-
R relay@relay.publicsquare.global shared this topic