🔗 Link to Paper on which the article is based

written by Mohammed Bilal Ahmed

Introduction

Throughout the last few semesters, I’ve noticed how students have a hard time understanding complex projects and the expected deliverables associated with them. Creating large projects from scratch is daunting to a beginning programmer. So, in the spring of 2023 I along with Alex Ng and Seth Rogers worked on a way to help students break down complex projects and teach them how to code using different planning methods. Pseudo-code provides a way to create and understand code and allows students to break down these larger problems into more manageable sections. The goal was that students who took this workshop would have a more structured approach to their projects and would allow students to break down these larger problems into more manageable sections.

Method and Implementation

We choose a workshop format to teach students how to use pseudo-code. The workshop was broken down into 3 parts. The first part was a lecture on pseudo-code and how to use it. The second part was a group activity where students would work together to create a pseudo-code for a given problem. The third part was a lab where students would work on their own to create pseudo-code for a given problem. We choose a workshop format because it was the most familiar to the students. The students were used to attending workshops and labs for their classes. We also choose a workshop format because it allowed us to teach students how to use pseudo-code in a more hands-on way. The students were able to practice using pseudo-code in a group setting and on their own.

Limitations of the paper

The workshop was only tested on a small group of students. We only had the oppurtunirty to test the workshop on 10 students. A larger sample size would have been beneficial. The workshop was also only tested on students who had some programming experience. We did not test the workshop on students who had no programming experience. This would have been beneficial because it would have allowed us to see if the workshop was effective for students who had no programming experience.

Next Steps

We hope to implement this lesson on pseudo-code inside of the curriculum at universities since it is so important to the understanding of programming. The next step would be to introduce this workshop into the curriculum through the professors and eventually teach TAs how to teach this information themselves. The link to the paper can be found at the start of the page.