Going to create more assignments with less work
Daily Rants, Teaching September 19th. 2006, 5:09pmToday, I had a discussion with my boss about the number and types of assignments I have my students complete in their classes. In my classes, I generally have my students complete five to six programming assignments. I usually create my own assignments with the intent of minimizing the amount of busy work my students have to do.
I hate busy work, and I am sure most students do too. However, my boss and a colleague both agree, as well as educational research, that keeping students busy strengthens their work ethic and increases their performance on exams. I have decided to find a happy medium. I am going to have, at minimum, seven assignments in my programming classes from now on with three exams. This way students move in smaller increments, and I am not bombarding them with menial tasks.
Aside from that, I am also working on a paper for my social foundations course and assignment two in my interactive media course. I have to drive to Tampa, again, this weekend. Hopefully, things will slow down after my qualifying exams. Well, back to work.
April 10th, 2007 at 7:36 am
I have to disagree with your boss, colleague, and any research that says that less-work-doesnt-teach-as-much-work-ethic as far as software development goes.
If you’re teaching a software development class, there should be effort put into doing less work. Not just from the professor’s point-of-view. The whole cliche of “work smarter not harder”. The more code (work) there is, the more complex the solution (if there is one).
The more complex the end product, the more time and money is spent on adding functionality or maintainence in the future.
Maybe instead of having students code a project you could introduce a working solution and see how much better it can be improved with LESS code (work)?