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Dr. Greg Butler |
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Favorite Websites: Association for Computing Machinery, SIG Computer Science Education Construx (Software process and Steve McConnell) The American Association for Adult and Continuing Education American Educational Research Association |
Research Interests: Instructional design for teaching programming and software design. My interests focus on determining the effectiveness of a particular instructional technique as applied to teaching various CS topics. Facilitation of system acceptance. The specific interest is related to identifying those actions by management that are most meaningful to those who must use the system. |
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Index
Hints for Novices: Successfully Software Coursework
How to Use Examples
Habits of Good Learners
This Sure Helped Me...
Tutorials
for Some Problems
Other Stuff
A
Couple (Of Many) Traits Of
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Good learner
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Poor learner
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Self-
Monitoring. Most students make
spontaneous utterances assessing how well they understand the material. |
Utterances
tend to be more accurate/honest. Tend to make utterances that indicate when they do not
understand something. |
Utterances tend to be positive and inaccurate. In general, utter positive statements, such as “Makes
sense”, even though subsequent work indicates this was not true. |
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Approach to Examples Most students use examples in problem solving. How they are used affects the “gain” the
student achieves. |
Study, Reflect, Use if
Stuck - Good learners tend to read the examples and then try to explain
to themselves both what they saw and why the example solution was
approached the way it was. - Good learners tend to try to solve the problem
themselves, using the example for help only when they are stuck. |
Read, Maximize
Analogical Use. - Poor learners tend to read examples, but do not reflect
on the material. - Poor learners try to maximize the use of examples in
their solutions, attempting to copy as much of the example into the
solution as possible. |
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Source: VanLehn, K. (1996). Cognitive skill
acquisition. Annual Review
of Psychology. 1996, 47. p. 513-39 |
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Good Advice to Apply in Your First Programming Class
Long ago I needed to learn C very quickly for a specific purpose. I bought a book by Greg Perry, I don't remember the title, that I used to learn the language. In it he gave me the piece of advice that I believe has helped me the most. In general this advice was:
Type in the code examples, do not just read them.
This is very much like learning a new spoke language. You would not even dream of just reading a book about the new language and, with no practice, attempt to use it. You would:
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Spoken Language |
Programming Language |
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1. Read the new words, trying to sound them out. |
Type in the code example. |
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2. Attend to each new word's meaning. |
Closely attend to the syntax as you type |
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3. Use the new word in a new sentence |
Modify the example. "Play" with the functionality that the example is demonstrating. (If the purpose of the example is to demonstrate a for loop counting from 1 to 5, change it to count from 5 to 1). |
This site is primarily a component of a research project. As a side-benefit, I've shared the notes with my students. These notes are designed to concisely address some very basic concepts in programming that I observe students having trouble with. The language used is Java. These notes by no means represent a complete treatment of programming concepts, Java, or even a particular topic. You are welcome to use it and view the contents. Please don't be grumpy if things aren't exactly right.
Greg
User Notes:
- If you are presented with a log-in box when you click on a link, just cancel it.
- If you have a problem with the site or spot an inaccuracy, please send me a note: gbutler@regis.edu
- Notes on Choices:
- HTML with Sound: You can just view the pages or wait for the sound to start for each page-- could be a long time with a 56K modem.
- PowerPoint show with Sound: You can just view on line or download (5M). You need MS PowerPoint or the PowerPoint viewer.
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Arrays |
First Introduction |
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Arrays and Named Constants |
Second Lesson: Using Named Constants and Multidimensional Arrays |
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Block Scope |
A discussion of the scope (usability/life )of variables and identifiers relative to blocks of code (methods, for statements, etc.). |
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Classes |
First Introduction. What's a class and related terms |
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Classes - Subclasses and Inheritance |
Introduction to creating subclasses from classes, access operators. Comes with sample code. |