Can programming be taught?

This blog post is specifically targeted at Teresa again as she rewrote much of the first year undergraduate Computer Science Programming Principles course a couple of years ago.

A friend pointed out Jeff Atwood's blog at codinghorror.com.  If you're not aware of Jeff, he's a co-founder of Stack Overflow and has many thought provoking articles.  The one that really caught my eye is from back in 2006 called Separating Programming Sheep from Non-Programming Goats.  The paper mentioned (the blog links to a draft here, but look on your preferred academic repo for the final version) discusses the high rate of failure on these types of foundation programming courses and suggests that students who fail the course can be determined before they even start the course with a high degree of accuracy.

I find the following quote, like the author, quite disturbing and also a little hard to believe.

But it's still a little disturbing that the act of programming seems literally unteachable to a sizable subset of incoming computer science students

Could it really be possible that some people simply can't be taught how to program?  If so, what are the root causes to this?

Also linked to this, is the UK government's intended changes to secondary IT education to make it more computer science relevant likely to change the results if the experiment was to be rerun in a few years?

Assessment - Required in all learning? - Revisited

So, it's been a while since my last blog post and I haven't been quite as active as I would have hoped, but I've got quite a few new posts all half written, begging to be finished, so what this space.

Since my last post on assessment, Teresa has offered a retort to my ideas here.  I couldn't resist picking up on a few issues that I'm sure Teresa won't be surprised me bringing to her attention.

The first point Teresa has even admitted I'd be shaking me head at.  She was spot on.  I am and here's why:

A student can either do something, or they can’t – a miss is as good as a mile. The only skills or knowledge that we can assume a student has are the ones they can demonstrate.

My first issue with this is that whether someone can demonstrate a skill depends totally on how well that skill or competency is defined.  Driving is a fairly easy situation to define what the competency is an how to assess it; there is a whole book dedicated to defining it's rules: the highway code.  When you move away to anything more grey and difficult to define, this assertion falls apart.

My original example of where this is the case diversity training for Hampshire Constabulary.  To even start to assess this type of training you need to set out what the competencies are.  It's very tempting to qualify this in terms of what the tutor is trying to teach: "To demonstrate to students that different cultures and backgrounds can affect the way an Officer should deal with a situation" rather than what the student should learn.  The problem arises when you try and define it for the student as the outcomes can be different for different people.

What you're trying to do it change beliefs and subtle behaviours in everyday encounters.  How do you assess change in beliefs?  Are there a set of rules that define exactly what a person's beliefs should be in this instance?  I would suggest not, and that to attempt this would be very difficult.  The teaching here is more about giving people a set of tools, giving people a brief set of instructions and (for want of a better word) hope that they use them properly.  Here's an analogy: say you give someone a knife and show someone how to use it.  You can never be sure what someone's beliefs on the knife are.  Do they respect it?  Do they think it's a utility rather than a weapon?  Do they appreciate it's power?  Will they ever forget to use it or misuse it?  More importantly here, can you ever assess any of these things?  People often are unsure of what their beliefs really are until they are tested in real life.  Real life is often far removed from simulation or the classroom, I can't see how you can pass or fail someone on this.

Teresa makes the point that this is about the teaching, not the learning, but only a learner could even start to assess beliefs.  Teresa also says that the "assessment" could be from the learners perspective and that they can be small, atomic and unconscious.  I agree this is useful, but is it assessment?  The though provoking image is a good example, people could challenge their initial perceptions and perhaps change them in future, but is this really assessment and do it really qualify the standard of teaching?

Assessment - Required in all learning?

Last Friday I was jogging with a friend of mine Teresa when an interesting conversation came up.  Just to give a bit of context, Teresa is currently working an her PhD, the topic of which I always ask but never seem to remember.  Anyway, it's very much related to e-learning, so she's pretty clued up about the academic side of education theory.  I'll mention now, that my knowledge in this area isn't great and what I'll say here may be fundamentally flawed.  If it is, I'd love to know in the comments, or you could just comment if you just disagree with me.

I was talking about some recent Police training I had been on, and my feelings on it.  I had then mentioned that some of the training I do for the Police isn't assessed.  Teresa's feelings on this were made very clear: if you don't assess learning, then there is no point taking it; I disagreed with this.

I'll be honest and say I don't think I really explained my reasons for this particularly well, but we moved on to other topics and/or we became out of breath and therefore decided that running in silence may be more sustainable.

So in particular Teresa style, she's been stewing on this for a week and decided to challenge my assertion via a few questions in an email:

a. Is it worth teaching or learning something if you are never going to use it?
   i. Where “using it” includes incorporating or translating it into another, larger ability that can be used.
b. Which is better in situations that require correct, full knowledge about X:
   i.  Knowing nothing about X
   ii. Having half-knowledge or a misconception about X, but a belief that you know it fully

I'll directly answer these questions in a moment, but the context in which I made my assertion was quite specific.  I've done a few courses for the Police where the majority of the course isn't necessary to gain new knowledge per se, but to alter or reinforce (depending on existing position) particular behaviour.  This focus on soft skills is rather different to normal teaching.

The set of desired behaviours aren't really taught, instead the instructors tend to challenge the perceived "undesired" view and this is generally done within group discussions.  Sometimes, these are pseudo assessed via role-plays, but how do you really assess whether someone has the desired behaviour when they are out on duty?  I don't see how you can.  Often behaviour won't be changed in the 2 hour training session either.  Perhaps the trainer gives an interesting anecdote which challenges your existing beliefs, it may take may days or weeks of mulling over to accept it's merits and change your beliefs and therefore future behaviour.  Again, how could you possibly assess this?

So to answer the questions put to me, no, I don't think it's worth teaching or learning something you never have a possibility of using it, however, where you are changing beliefs and behaviour, is this really an "ability"?

I agree that having misconceptions or not fully understanding certain topics can be damaging, especially in the Police, and I agree that when we're taught legislation and we have concrete information to learn that assessment  is vital.  That said, how can you possibly assess whether someone is more accommodating of other races or whether we understand what it's like to be mentally ill so we can treat them the best possible way?  Answers on a postcard please.

Production Value

This will be one of two blogs on a couple of videos that I can't seem to stop listening to recently. This particular video is by Nanalew and Meekakitty. Of of my first thoughts was about the production value of what are amateur videos on Youtube. I am continually surprised about how well the are scripted, shot and edited. The overall feel of the video to me is of one that could quite easily be professional. Whilst this video is a particularly good example, it's far from unique. 


This makes me wonder, is this going to affect how professionals make material? If two people can film a professional quality music video with not much more than a laptop and a Canon D60, why go the expense of investing in professional equipment? Are we already well into a quiet revolution where anyone can make all sorts of video content cheaply and quickly? 


 This obviously has all sorts of implications, my first thought being documentaries. Think how fast we can give well produced material to an international audience, which may inform us of specific situations or indeed change our attitude to our existing beliefs. Once again, technology seems to have meritocratised information, which I think has more profound effects than we may currently realise.