The Joy of Teaching – Student Analysis
My student base has many characteristics that uniquely define it, some with their advantages and others with their disadvantages. First and foremost the students in my class are Information Technology majors. Despite being only a 200 level class it is not required for the Information Technology minor and thus all of my students are heavily invested in the IT field. Moreover, the course has a reputation for being difficult and so the majority of students are juniors and seniors. There are few sophomores and very few freshmen as there are multiple prerequisites for the class. To further extend the age demographic, I’ve thus far only taught the night section and so I field the students who have full time jobs. The end result is a student base who are more mature and responsible. They understand their responsibilities and are more engaged in classes. However, this comes with its disadvantages. The course is rather time intensive and having full time jobs, often families as well, many students struggle with finding enough hours in the day.
The other demographic characteristic that is worth noting in my class is the cultural diversity in the course. I have a very healthy mix of all ethnicities and this sometimes creates language barriers. Overall, the wide variety of ages, ethnicities, and skill levels in my class create a HUGE disparity in comprehension. This is a large obstacle as my class tends to play out as pass/fail with students either getting it or not. Students are either extremely willing to engage the class with questions or they are extremely uncomfortable and recluse themselves while falling behind.
The Joy of Teaching – Aims and Outcomes of My Syllabus
Aims
- The main themes or ideas I will emphasize are the utilization of a scripting language to expand on web capabilities and the logical mindset needed to appropriately dissect and create programming solutions
- The big picture or story line is the understanding of scripting languages and its impact on the web
- The main questions I am interested in are:
- The mental model I am promoting is the “programmer’s mindset”. How to deconstruct a problem and divide it into programming tasks
Outcomes
- To answer these questions, I want my students to become more skillful in taking real-world context situations and being able to produce functional responses as opposed to myopic hypothetical contexts that are “academic only”
- The mental model (paradigm of reality) that my students may bring with them and that I want to challenge is the linear/procedural method of thinking that does not lend itself to programming which is based on efficiency via repetition and iteration of code
Style
- The diction and tone that I want to use are casual. Learning to program can be a frustrating and time-consuming process with a slow learning curve. I want to be inviting with my students for them to feel comfortable asking questions, making mistakes, and learning through doing.
Computer programmers have great skills that not all of us can appreciate. My father worked in computers for the Army back in the 1940s and 1950s. He built computers and designed programs for clients. I admire someone who can write programs and can teach others.