SI Seminar by Andrea Gallidabino
Talk: Do you understand the code you write? 'I hope the TAs won't look at this!'
Online
Thu, Nov 4, 2021
Andrea Gallidabino presenting Do you understand the code you write? ‘I hope the TAs won’t look at this!’ at the USI Software Institute.
Recorded Talk
Abstract
Learning to program is difficult, but submitting an assignment that ‘works’ is surprisingly easy. Is it good that some of our students are at a disadvantage compared to some of our greatest ‘collage artists’? Students that submit original work and try hard to understand what was explained in class, unfortunately, sometimes get worse grades. As educators, if we focus on teaching programming concepts, we should grade our students accordingly. In this seminar, we will reflect on how we can make sure that our students understand the code they write. We will look at real snippets submitted by our third-semester students, and we will use our tool https://expressiontutor.org/ to explain why we believe those solutions are alarming.