Computers in school

Mark Guzdial guzdial at cc.gatech.edu
Tue Aug 7 16:52:51 UTC 2001


>From inference and by observation of the demographics of every 
>programming lab I have ever seen, how does this
>statement explain why causcasian, indian, oriental males do not 
>reject CS majors if boredom is the only issue.
>
>Education is not supposed to be a rock concert.
>

Please note my earlier posting: Studies across schools and countries 
are suggesting that a LARGE percentage of students who are 
successfully passing intro courses are NOT actually learning to 
program.

The second observation is that introductory courses typically have 
enormous drop-out and failure rates.  10-30% is not uncommon.  Great 
that some people are succeeding.  That so many are NOT is a problem.

What would you think of a manufacturing process that threw away 
10-30% of its input raw material?  Georgia Tech brags about having 
highest average SAT scores of incoming freshmen of any public 
university in the US.  Our "input" is terrific.  If most of these 
students are not learning to program, then something's wrong with how 
we're teaching programming.  The multi-university, multi-country 
study I mentioned earlier (led by Mike McCracken) showed that it's 
not just us.  Therefore, I suggest that there's a problem.  I cite 
the AAUW study as one lead toward a solution.

Mark

--------------------------
Mark Guzdial : Georgia Tech : College of Computing : Atlanta, GA 30332-0280
Associate Professor - Learning Sciences & Technologies.
Collaborative Software Lab - http://coweb.cc.gatech.edu/csl/
(404) 894-5618 : Fax (404) 894-0673 : guzdial at cc.gatech.edu
http://www.cc.gatech.edu/gvu/people/Faculty/Mark.Guzdial.html




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