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Kate Blackham

Programming 101

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Edited by Kate Blackham, Wednesday, 23 Mar 2022, 15:41

Just attended a Teams meeting presenting some STEM pedagogy research on improving the students' experience of learning Python on my module (SM123). 

SM123 is first-year undergraduate equivalent and is often the first "proper" physics module they'll take, after the generic everyone-in-science module. So about half the students have never programmed before and many of them find it really tough - they find it time consuming and it knocks their confidence. 

Things to consider going forward:

  • Refer students to the new Programming for Physical Sciences website (I already do this anyway).
  • Personally, I was honest with my students right from the start. I told them that Fortran 77 in UNIX used to reduce me to tears ALL.THE.TIME. I told them it is hard. Even my friends and relatives who work in programming find it hard, my children who are studying GCSE and A level Computer Science find it hard. Sometimes computers make you want to scream. I told them about my first job out of university as a technical editor of programming books, checking that the code ran - and if it didn't, which to be honest was 75% of the time for some books, making the blasted thing work. The key to programming is to stick at it and do your best. They seemed to respond well to that. I've seen this with A level students too, that because I just know more and have more experience, it's easy for them to assume that I've always been brilliant or learned everything by osmosis, when actually I often struggled to learn just as they are.
  • One of things that came up was that the students often got help from each other (and tutors) on the tutor group forum. I've not seen them use it for that, so for Python 3 in a couple of weeks time, I think I might start a new thread and suggest they discuss what they're struggling with there (they can also use the dedicated module-wide Python forum, but that can be intimidating if your confidence is dropping).
  • There was lots of discussion about how the Python segment of SM123 may not be taught in the best way. But that's something for the module team to consider at revision stage.


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