Challenges to Computer Science
Education Research
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Mark Guzdial
College of Computing/GVU
Georgia Tech
Bottomline: What we’re doing isn’t new,
so a contribution means knowing what’s
happened…and going beyond it.
Computer Science is new,
But Humans aren’t
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Evolution is slow.
Lessons from Education are relevant for us.
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Humans are bad at estimating their own
performance and learning.
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Therefore, course opinion surveys are inaccurate
measures of educational innovations.
Humans learn throughout their lives—our brains
have enormous plasticity.
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Therefore, we don’t have to teach everything in the first
semester, and people can unlearn “bad habits”
And Computer Science isn’t that new,
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People have been studying object-oriented
programming since the mid-70’s.
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Alan Kay and Adele Goldberg described students
getting lost in class hierarchies in 1978.
We’ve known that students confuse class and
instance for over 20 years.
If we teach computer applications first,
students won’t learn the theory to make it all
make sense.
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Said Alan Perlis in 1961.
And Computer Science Education isn’t
new either
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For example:
Lessons about Algorithm Animation
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Aptitude-Treatment Interaction (ATI)
Static images.
Predictions.
Making own’s own.
A contribution means we have to build on
what others have done.
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Reinvention is rarely contribution.