Month: October 2021

This post is responding to the prompt: How will your interactive learning resource specifically ensure that the needs of all learners can be met?

Our interactivity learning resource is focused on explaining how different programming languages can be extremely different to use, and on how newer programming languages are in general easier than previous programming languages. This is an important topic to teach in many different ways for different learners since it is an alien topic for many people; that is, most people do not have any experience working with any programming language and thus don’t have any foundation to build on top of. Because of this, we will be providing several different avenues of explanation to help different types of learners learn through their preferred method. For example, the main resource we provide is simply a written explanation of how languages have changed over time, for learners who prefer simply reading and understanding a provided text. However, many learners (myself included) much prefer to learn by doing, through assignments or projects rather than textbooks. For these learners, we are currently planning on adding several different interactive resources that allow them to experiment with different programming languages, and hopefully conclude the same results as we did, that programming languages have become much easier to work with over time.

Another advantage our approach has is that we allow the learner to go through the material in their own time. This is especially useful when dealing with topics in computer science as some people tend to understand these concepts a lot faster than others, and so our format will allow those people to quickly advance through the material while slower learners can take their time to ensure they have a rock-solid understanding. Our interactive sections also benefit from this, as learners who quickly understand the material can simply run through our interactive sections once to confirm their understanding, while learners who are struggling with the material can go through the interactive sections many times over to build their understanding of our topic.

Inquiry-based learning is an approach to teaching a subject that focuses on the student’s curiosity rather than the teacher’s knowledge. In general, the teacher or facilitator will begin the session by presenting a question to the class. The students are then encouraged to brainstorm possible methods to answer the question. Computer Science classes use this method quite a lot, where the lecturer begins class by presenting a problem (i.e. “I have a list of N items in some random order. What is the fastest way to sort this list so that the smaller items are in front of the larger items”) and then spends the rest of the class going over possible solutions. Usually the session starts with the simplest solution and builds up to the optimal (and usually most complicated) solution. In the list sorting example given, this is usually done by starting with selection sort (Go through the list once to find the smallest element, move that element to the front of the list, repeat on the rest of the list until the list is sorted) and building up to quicksort (Choose a random element called a pivot, go through the list and move every smaller element to the left of the pivot and every larger element to the right of the pivot, then repeat on either half until the list is sorted).

This approach will be used in our Learning Blueprint since we are also explaining a computer science topic, but it will not be used as directly as it is in the example given. We will ask the user “What makes a programming language easier to use? What are the tradeoffs of this convenience?”, hopefully prompting them to formulate their own response, and then explain to them how languages have changed over time to be easier and slower in general. While it is not as directly inquiry-based as the example, the learning experience will still be driven by the user’s curiosity on how programming languages can be easier or harder to use, as well as their interest in how languages have built on top of each other.