-
Notifications
You must be signed in to change notification settings - Fork 16
Student Activity Types
Challenges are ~15 minute activities we do towards the beginning of class. Students must work alone, are not supposed to use the Internet, and must submit their solutions using a Google form at the end of that time period. We talk about solutions as a group immediately after students turn them in.
Challenges cover topics from approximately 7 days ago. This plays on the improved learning that you receive if you try to recall a concept which is just beginning to go stale in your memory.
Challenges are also very similar to interview questions which they will be asked after class. This rehearsal is much appreciated by students.
Exercises (aka Problems-of-the-day) are ~15 minute activities that students do before a new topic is introduced. They must work in pairs (or triples), and they do not have to turn in their results. This plays on the improved learning that you receive if you try to solve a problem before you are taught how to solve it.
I use the term "assignment" to refer to Monday, Tuesday, or Wednesday evening homeworks. An assignment might span more than one evening, but they typically only involve students working by themselves (with a couple of exceptions).
Assignments (and projects) have Normal, Hard, and Nightmare modes, which give students runway if they complete the basic version of the assignment (Normal mode).
Even in Normal mode, I ask them to do at least one thing which I have not explicitly taught them (which will be covered the next day). The harder modes typically foreshadow something to come in about a week (e.g. the week before we cover databases, a hard mode is persist an assignment's data so that it will still be there if the program is shut off and restarted).
I use the term "project" to refer to weekend homeworks. I typically assign them to be completed in pairs. All other items mentioned for assignments apply here as well.
I have readings selected for each evening of the curriculum. They vary in style (and length) from blog posts to Rails Guides to audio podcasts. From time to time I make it clear that a particular reading is required, but for the most part, it is up to students to decide whether they want to delve further into a certain topic.
Readings typically expound on topics that we've already covered rather than foreshadow the next day's lecture.
On Thursday afternoons, I like to hold optional workshops. Students who want to review the week's content come, and we take a new problem and break it down into chunks. I give them a small task to do, then 10 minutes to do it. After the 10 minutes we all come together, walk through the steps they took, and repeat. This typically cycles 4 or 5 times, and these review sessions have been positively received by struggling students.
I haven't documented the problems I use for these yet, but I plan to do so during the next cohort.