Who
It has been said that I'm not a typical academic. In fact I would argue quite forcefully that I'm not an academic at all. I suspect that this impacts not inconsiderably on the context and conduct of this module, so a brief history will probably help in filling in some background.
I am actually something called a Senior Teaching Fellow. This sounds very grand, but really it just means that most of what I do is teach. I get some time off for "scholarship" and so on (which is how I came to do this), but I have no formal responsibility to do any research. In a research-led department in a research-led university this can often lead to an interesting existence.
I got into this job very much by accident, or certainly as a result of a spectacular series of coincidences. After I graduated I spent some years working for various companies owned by the University of Leeds. I wrote programs, I designed and managed databases and I even managed projects. This was all well and good, but towards the end of 1993 it started to become obvious that the time had come to move on; notably the company behind the database I had been using (Ingres) was going through a series of upheavals and might not exist much longer.
So I phoned up my old tutor and he offered me a short term contract putting together databases for the university's new timetable. Later that year the department was desperate for someone to cover the teaching of a course and I made the mistake of passing the Head of Department's office when he was looking for a volunteer. I "volunteered", and I've not looked back since. The following year I was handed the introductory programming course (the department was once again desperate for cover), and the rest is, as they say, history.
If I look back on it, teaching is probably something that I've always wanted to be involved in, and it's been a happy series of accidents.
Now, I like to think (especially around promotion time) that I have a small reputation for thinking and writing about issues surrounding the teaching and learning of programming. I've written two books, (one about programming with C++ and one more fashionable one about Java) but there wasn't enough syntax crammed in to them for most people. I've even written a thesis [PDF], for which the University of Kent was kind enough to give me an MSc. I quite often get asked out to other places to talk about programming and motivation, which is nice.
I'm interested in how (and probably also why) we teach programming. I'm interested in how our attempts to do this affect the motivation of the students, and how different groups of students react to our efforts in very different ways. This in turn leads me to think about retention issues and everything surrounding that.
Finally, it should be noted that I am a prejudiced person. I have ideas that do not always fit in with the accepted norm. I do change these ideas from time to time, but my current prejudices are:
- Java. How can anyone seriously propose to teach such a rich and complex language to people who have never programmed before?
- IDEs. These are all well and good, but only if the learner can distinguish between the IDE and the programming (which is not the case), and only if the learner can program when the scaffold of the IDE is pulled away (which is also not the case).
- Lectures. Why do we insist on trying to transmit a practical skill by standing in front of people and talking? Would we teach them to drive or make a soufflé in this way?
- Timing. Why do we insist on teaching programming in the first semester of the first year? There is nothing to build on. If we really did want to demotivate students this would be a fine way to achieve it.
Right, now we've established what you're dealing with we can continue.