Version 3 Feedback

Posted 2018-04-28

Version 3 of How to Teach Programming (and Other Things) is now kinda sorta maybe ready for feedback: if you have time to go through 270 pages and tell me what’s missing, redundant, confusing, or just plain wrong, I’d be very grateful. I’m hoping to get the book out in June, so anything you can give me before then would be a big help.

As background, you can see Version 2 here, and the plan for Version 3 here. The book is meant to be a brief introduction to ideas and techniques I have found useful when teaching free-range adult learners how to program, and covers:

how learning works;
how to design and maintain lessons;
how to deliver those lessons; and
how to grow a community of practice around teaching.

All of the material will be freely available under the Creative Commons - Attribution license; digital copies will be free to download, and printed copies will be available at cost.

Who the Book is For

The people I had in mind when compiling this book are:

Emily trained as a librarian, and how works as a web designer and project manager in a small consulting company. In her spare time, she helps run web design classes for women entering tech as a second career. She is now recruiting colleagues to run more classes in her area using the lessons that she has created, and wants to know how to grow a volunteer teaching organization.
Moshe is a professional programmer with two teenage children whose school doesn’t offering programming classes. He has volunteered to run an after-school program, and while he frequently gives presentations to colleagues, he has no experience designing lessons. He wants to learn how to build effective lessons in collaboration with others, and is interested in turning his lessons into a self-paced online course.
Samira is an undergraduate in robotics who is thinking about becoming a full-time teacher after she graduates. She wants to help teach weekend workshops for undergraduate women, but has never taught an entire class before, and feels uncomfortable teaching things that she’s not an expert in. She wants to learn more about education in general in order to decide if it’s for her.
Gene is a professor of computer science whose research area is operating systems. They have been teaching undergraduate classes for six years, and increasingly believe that there has to be a better way. The only training available through their university’s teaching and learning center relates to posting assignments and grades in the learning management system, so they want to find out what else they ought to be asking for.

These people have a variety of technical backgrounds and some previous teaching experience, but no formal training in teaching, lesson design, or community organization. Most work with free-range learners (i.e., outside institutional classrooms with required homework and externally-mandated curriculum) and are focused on teenagers and adults rather children; all have limited time and resources. Each will use this material differently:

Emily will take part in a weekly online reading group with her volunteers.
Moshe will cover part of this material in a two-day weekend workshop and study the rest on his own.
Samira will use this material in a one-semester undergraduate course with assignments, a project, and a final exam.
Gene will read the book on their own in their office or while commuting, wishing all the while that universities did more than pay lip service to high-quality teaching.

If any of these people sound like you, please get in touch.

Contents

Introduction
Who You Are
History
Have a Code of Conduct
Acknowledgments
Challenges
Building Mental Models
Formative Assessment
Challenges
Expertise and Memory
Repetition vs. Deliberate Practice
Concept Maps
Seven Plus or Minus Two
Challenges
Cognitive Load
Split Attention
Pattern Recognition
Minimal Manuals
A Final Thought
Challenges
Individual Learning
Six Strategies
Time Management
Peer Assessment
Final Thoughts
Challenges
A Lesson Design Process
Learner Personas
Learning Objectives
Maintainability
Challenges
Pedagogical Content Knowledge
What’s Our Baseline?
What Do Students Misunderstand?
What Are We Teaching Them Now?
Do Languages Matter?
What Does Student Code Look Like?
How Do Students Program?
What Mistakes Do Learners Make?
What About Testing and Debugging?
Do Error Messages Matter?
Does Visualization Matter?
How Can We Help Them?
How Should We Design Lessons?
Final Thoughts
Challenges
Teaching as a Performance Art
Feedback
How to Practice Teaching
Live Coding
Challenges
In the Classroom
Enforce the Code of Conduct
Teach Together
Assess Prior Knowledge
Plan for Mixed Abilities
Take Notes Together
Sticky Notes
Peer Instruction
Never a Blank Page
Setting Up Your Learners
Other Teaching Practices
Limit Innovation
Feedback
Challenges
Motivation and Demotivation
Demotivation
Impostor Syndrome
Stereotype Threat
Mindset
Accessibility
Inclusivity
Why Learn to Program?
Challenges
Teaching Online
MOOCs
Video
Automatic Grading
Flipped Classrooms
Life Online
Challenges
Exercise Types
The Classics
Tracing
Diagrams
Higher-Level Thinking
Challenges
Building Community
Learn, Then Do
Three Steps
Retention
Governance
Meetings, Meetings Meetings
The Post Mortem
Final Thoughts
Challenges
Marketing
What Are You Offering to Whom?
Branding and Positioning
The Art of the Cold Call
A Final Thought
Challenges
Partnerships
Working With Schools
Working Outside Schools
Final Thoughts
Challenges
Why I Teach
Bibliography
Appendices
License
Code of Conduct
Citation
Using This Material
In Person
How to Contribute
Glossary
Lesson Design Template
Checklists for Events
Presentation Rubric
Teamwork Rubric
Pre-Assessment Questionnaire
Ten Quick Tips for Teaching Programming
Design Notes