In the 2001/2002 academic year, working towards the Durham postgraduate certificate in higher education (PGCert), I conducted interviews with my students as part of investigation into their conceptions and approaches to learning. The results of this investigation influence my philosophy of teaching and learning. Consequently I have chosen to partially reproduce them here.
Interviews were conducted in the last week of the second term just prior to the Easter vacation. Three students were interviewed. We'll call them Fred, Jim and Sheila. All had arrived at university via 'A' levels. Two of them (Fred and Sheila) had no prior experience of programming. All three were enrolled on the PDS double module. To appreciate the following discussion it may be necessary to examine the details of the course and content for 2001/2002.
Reflecting something of the responses to the end of module questionnaire for 2001/2002 we find Fred and Sheila struggling through the first term and we find the whole thing is unproblematic for Jim. All three students are clear on the value of "learning by doing" and all three are clear that programming is interesting and can be satisfying.
Sheila and Fred have quite unpleasant experiences in their first term. Sheila can't relate to the lecturer and Fred feels his inexperience is not taken into consideration and that he is not given sufficient support. Neither engages successfully with the weekly exercises and fall behind. However they both turn the situation around.
There appear to be a number of factors that contribute to the transformation. Both students are strongly motivated. Both appear to possess skills compatible with deep approaches to learning and at the time of interview each possesses a rich conception of learning in the context of programming - Fred makes comments that suggest a gradual reconception has assisted with his recovery.
Besides their own resources a couple of environmental factors contribute to the transformation. One is that they find space to learn in the form of the Christmas vacation. The other is that they find an effective resource in the form of the course text. Though an apparantly trivial observation things might not have been so fortunate if, as was the case for one respondent to the end of module questionnaire, they didn't get along with it.
The experiences of Fred and Sheila serve to highlight various issues relating to principles of good teaching [Ramsden]. Sheila struggles to understand the lecturer. She finds the quality of explanation is poor. In part this is due to the use of examples that are not personally meaningful. It may also be that, as Fred feels, too much prior knowledge is assumed.
Sheila is exhausted by practicals issued week after week and in this respect appears to have limited control over her learning. Control is also an issue with Fred who observes that during the first term the practical class exercises were made available on the same day as his class and this left him with no time to prepare.
Another of Fred's experiences serves to highlight the importance of clear goals. In this case the problem is with another computing module. The practical exercises are badly written and this makes completing them that much harder.
Reporting on Jim's experience helps convey the diversity in the student cohort. He has prior experience of programming and computing, he finds the course relatively unproblematic and appears relatively uninvolved. His learning activities are quite strategic, tending not to go to lectures because he perceives that they are targeted at novices and trying to complete as much practical work as possible within his practical class. He tends only to glance at practicals in advance of his class.
Sheila describes a stressful experience, particularly in the first term when experiencing difficulty relating to the lecturer and leaving work to the last minute.
She [the lecturer] just didn't, she just didn't click with me at all, you know, some peop, like I said, when Y says something I think "Oh yeah, actually", you know, I know exactly what he's saying but when X said something it was like "What?" and not only that but I think in some, but I hate to say this but I think in some examples, in some cases rather it was the examples she used.
...[if you leave it to the last minute] you're going to panic, and then everything's going to go wrong, and then you're going to feel really bad because you can't do it,...
...But no, I've stopped doing that now, I you know, get it started on Monday or whatever, and you know and have a week to do it.
The situation was turned around during the Christmas vacation.
Yeah, but I recognised, you see that, it really was kind of a state of like, well "you've got to do it yourself or you're never get to grips with it". So that's what I did over Christmas. And this term's been a lot better.
Sheila's experience is a roller coaster of ups and downs. One of the driving forces behind the learning is a fear of failure.
...the problem is that, if you start out badly at something, or at first you feel a bit, you know, not very good at something for whatever reason, you know, em, then what happens is you see, you don't have the initial confidence with it.
...You know, you start to build it up a little bit more but there's still this fear in the back of your mind like "Oh God, what if I get given something that I can't do?", "What am I going to do?" (laughs)
...but that that fear, that can make it a hundred times worse, that feeling that absolute fear that you've got like, in the core centre, you go "Aaaah", which is what makes you start it on a Monday nught, you know, and makes you get it done, because you just, you know, you know, you know that it's that thing that you find difficult so you have to get it started.
Each term the workload becomes a drain. In part it's likely due to the stress.
[with respect to the current material]...I was really glad that we have Easter coming up because there's no doubt in my mind that if we'd started this a couple of weeks earlier, you know like four weeks earlier I'd have had to carry on with it continuously and not had that time space to get used to it. I would have been struggling, I'm really glad to have the time to get used to it.
[with respect to factors contributing to work load] I think with a lot of it, when you just get thrown, you know, a piece of work, and then another piece of work, you know, one after the other, for you know, ten weeks, you know, continuously, at the end of it you are tired, you know, and you just can't be bothered to do any more, you know, and it really is a case of consciously having, I mean, consciously having to just make yourself, not make yourself do it but get yourself motivated in order to do it.
On the positive side though programming is interesting and the achievements satisfying.
Okay, well the thing is, I think, what I like about the course it that it is quite challenging,... it is very easy to get very stressed out about it, but it's better to have simething that, you know, you can get a bit worked up about (laughing) than it is to have something that you know,... brush off because it's not challenging.
And it's something that's interesting, do you know what I mean. I mean I do find it interesting. And especially, you know, when you get, you know, when you have written a program, you know, and you've had trouble with it or whatever, and then you know, it finally works and then you know, you see it working and you think "No it's going to mess up" so you test it a bit and you put in all the possible values you can think of. And after about two hours you're satisfied that it is actually working and you go "Yes!", you know?
Em, and em and then you see, and if that happens to you, then you see it renews all your motivation, and you feel all happy with yourself and eveything's all good, you see. So, you know, it goes either way I suppose. Em, but that's the thing I like about it.
Now similarly the thing I don't like about it is that it is, it is so stressful. (laughs) So it's, it's a two way thing. The thing that is good about it is essentially the thing that is, bad about it as well.
Though it's not clear what sort of approach Sheila followed in the early stages, the descriptions of later activies and objectives suggest a depth to learning. She gives a quite profound explanation of what it means to learn in the context of computer programming.
Well, you know, it's, it's a case of if you don't, if you don't actually do the programming, you don't know how to program, because you don't get what's going on with it. It's, only by doing it do you come to understand it, and in some cases you know, this is going to sound even more stupid, but you need to understand it in order to do it in the first place. But the true understanding comes from doing it, so it's all very well, em, trying to give you an example here, it's all very well someone saying "This is an ArrayList and this is how you use it, this is an iterator and this is how you use it" and you can understand those ideas, and in fact in order to use it you do need to understand those ideas before but you don't truely understand until you sit down, make your program, make a few mistakes you know, and then realise what you're doing wrong and then fix it and go "Oh yes, it all works now" and then that's when you truly get it, when you've done it you see.
Fred also found the course a significant problem to begin with. He reports that programming is like nothing he's ever done before and he feels that the course didn't take account of this. He is aware that others do have prior experience and greater ability and he found their presence (or rather absence) demoralising.
My difficulty is that I've never done anything like it before. I've come to university with no programming background. When you sat down and typed "Hello world" in the first practical that was going well over my head. It sounds silly now, but I was like "public class" what's this about, I didn't really have a clue. And that was the first term I really did struggle just to keep trying to catch up. I was always behind.
[regarding good and bad things about the course] The bad things certainly were last term, getting left behind, all the people that have programmed before just walk in to the practical, ten minutes later walking out after writing "hello world", and just, just always feeling behind and thinking "I'm getting quite bogged down with all this programming."
...I certainly wouldn't advice to anyone to come to university without doing the programming before.
Early learning seems to have been ineffective and his conception of learning seems to have been weak.
[On why he did not seek help] No it was, it was just, probably not really understanding the importance of getting it all sorted in my head. To be able to do it was important. I maybe didn't realise how important that was last term. Certainly the start of it. And when I did realise it was probably a little too late.
[describing early activities] Just sort of pitter pattering around, getting away with either looking at someone else's code, sort of copying through that or not doing the work and just getting a one for whatever we did.
Another factor contributing to his difficulties lay in the scheduling of practical classes and publication of materials. In term one the Durham teaching week starts on a Thursday:
I think one of the problems I had last year, last term sorry, I've got my Java lab, Java is what I was having trouble with last term, I have that on a Thursday which was then day one of the week, and the work came out that day and I was turning up to the lab cold having done nothing. And then to get to the stage where I could ask questions that were going to be helpful in two hours, it wasn't enough. So to have it a couple of days early has been a lot more useful. Certainly, it comes out on Monday now and I've got a lab Thursday so I've got sort of certainly Wednesday afternoon, when I've got nothing, to have a look at it. Any, any evenings.
On reflection he says he should probably have done extra work but that does not come naturally in your first term at university.
I know you did your what d'you call them, "practical sessions"? (interviewer: "surgeries") "Surgeries", yeah. I probably should have taken advantage of those more last term. I think in the first term you're new at university, you're enjoying life, you've got no parents telling you what to do, you've got no teachers telling you where to be, the idea of extra work doesn't come very easily to some people. But whereas this term where it's also "Oh I've got a degree to do here as well".
Like Sheila, Fred turned the situation around with work over the Christmas vacation.
[discussing learning activites, asked what he means by "click"] "Click", em I think Java's about clicking. The, there's just a, there's just a fine line between not getting something and just it all being clear, and that click is the crossing of that line. Certainly for the first, probably the first term I was a long way on the other side of the line and then over Christmas doing the gradings, particularly the Orange grading, and then working towards the Green, I clicked.
[Later in the interview] Aye, that's all I did over Christmas. I failed my Formal Aspects collections. When I went to see X he said "Did you do any work for Formal Aspects over Christmas?" and I said I didn't do any, I just spent the whole Christmas working on my gradings. And he said "Well what's you're reason?" and I said well I just didn't understand Java.
Activities in the second term seem much more effective. He expresses a preference for experiential, experimental activities and what was initially a problem becomes a significant source of satisfaction.
I find lectures actually don't help anywhere near as much as the practicals.
[on independent study activities] Well after that I mean, certainly with GUIs, when we're introduced to something new like that I'll go away and just sit down with the notes, sit down with RealJ open or JBuilder, whatever the case may be, and just copy and paste bits out of the notes, that Keith's left on the web for us, and just keep compiling, keep running and see what different things do, I like, I try and have a look at the API and see what's going on.
[expressing a preference for practical work] Oh yes, even if I'm just sitting down reading a book, within sort of two or three pages I'm bored of what I'm reading. Even thought my eyes are going across the lines I'm not actually thinking about it any more. So unless I actually sit down, in front of it and get stuck into it I can't, it's probably because I've got a short attention span. I need something to keep me attached.
I've always been interested in computing, never thought I'd be interested in programming. I thought that wasn't a side, I've always built computers and, I didn't think I'd be interested at all in programming and it wasn't the side of university degree I (unclear) looking forward to but having got into it it's the side I like the most.
[contrasting programming with work on formal methods] in programming you can actually execute something and see what you've written working. It's nice to be able to say "Oh I've, I can get, make this cube rotate in different directions" or "I can put in a coutple of question marks in and it'll return a word relating to the patterin I've put in". It's, that gives you a sense of you've actually done something...
When asked to describe what he felt he'd learnt from the course his response strongly suggests an effective conception and approach to learning programming.
I've learn't to think, to think like a programmer I suppose, to sort of work my way through a program methodically. In the first few weeks when we started using methods I was like well "I'd just quite like to leave it all in the main method and then it all makes perfect sense to me". But just as the programs have got harder I can see what the merits of putting everything in methods 'n commenting it well and things like that. Just starting to think on an object orientated sense, things like that.
Finally, contrasting programming practicals with those of another module, the importance of clear goals and good communication is raised.
Well, I mean some of the [programming] practicals that we've been given are maybe what, thirteen, fourteen sides of practical. And it's left pretty clear as to what you're meant to do rather than sort of three or four lines. Which are very vague and you can go off in a tangent and make things a lot harder than they're mean't to be.
Jim has prior experience of programming and of computers, he describes himself as self taught. As might be anticipated he finds programming interesting and enjoyable. The course is reasonably straightforward. He sees himself as benefitting by gaining a more fleshed out and thorough knowledge.
Well before I started the course my programming and computer knowledge was very self taught and messy and it's really, I can compare really, trying to learn something yourself to being taught it, and having being assessed and that sort of, throught the whole system of university, and it's, you end up with a much more sort of fleshed out and through knowledge of what you're doing. I think it's much better in that respect.
[good and bad things about the course] Oh right, well the good things are that I can really motivate, I can really sort of get into it and do it. It's quite, I don't have to push myself very hard to work. It's not, it's enjoyable. Bad things I suppose, I don't know, RealJ [programming tool]. I don't really like RealJ very much.
He finds the pace of lectures a little slow preferring not to attend and to rely on web notes and the recommended text instead.
A lot of the [Java] ones I've missed because, well, because obviously it's geared towards people who have no experience whatsoever. And so the pace can be a little slow somethings but it's quite, it's still useful to still pop in, obviously, see what's going on. And also because it's well, it follows the path of the book, the recommended text. I can read up pretty quickly on that, on the subject matter.
I always follow what's going on in the lectures even if I don't attend them. I always have em, I always check the notes on the web and make sure I know what I'm doing. So I do try to got to the web.
As far as programming is concerned, like the other two interviewees he values practical work and like Fred he also describes experimentation as part of learning.
[On the practical class] Well I think that's where most of the learning goes on to be honest. I think particularly, I don't know about for everybody but I find that for me that the practice is the best way to remember how to do something. I mean I probably don't have anywhere in my notes details of main method and recursion. You just remember it because you do it time, you know...
It's mostly practice, it's definitely mostly practice for the learn, for the Java stuff. Just doing things, trying out different techniques and trying different, I suppose, some practicals I can remember I've redone some practicals using a slightly different method and seeing how that worked out. For example we stared doing data structures and replacing ArrayLists with the other handcrafted things and seeing how it differed for example.
As suggested by earlier quotes Jim does not appear to feel that the workload is particularly heavy. He did not have to work on programming over Christmas and his approach to practical work is more relaxed than either Sheila or Fred. It's also quite strategic in a way that suggests that the course is fairly unproblematic.
[Discussing preparation for collections] Oh yes, I had finished Orange by up to Christmas but I needed to get Orange marked. So that just left the Green assessment. There wasn't any catching up or anything.
[on beginning practical work] Usually during, when the practical starts. I usually, well I sometimes glance over what it's, what the topic is before the practical but I don't tend to read into the actual details of it until the actual practical starts.
I try not to read through the notes in total depth. I try and sort of skim over them and see, try and determine where the theory ends and the questions begin, then look at the questions and how much of the theory I need to read for example. To see how much I can do without having to read forward, without having to gain more knowledge.
I suppose I'm trying to get as much done in the practical as possible and leave as little left to do afterwards.