Subj : Re: Good examples of programming course lecture notes
To   : comp.programming,comp.lang.java.programmer
From : clemenr
Date : Mon Sep 19 2005 03:24 am

Thanks to everyone who responded on this thread. From this and other
sources I found a lot of interesting information that have allowed me
to (I believe) make better slides than before.

A summary of sorts.

(i) Lots of programming. I had headed in this direction myself before.
But I've kept my notes highly program orientated, with about 60% of the
content being code.

(ii) Make the students write notes. The slides are not complete. The
students are given basically blank paper formated with cross-references
to the slides. They wll have to write down what I say.

(iii) Showing what happens when things go wrong. I have a split between
lectures and labs, and the labs are where I'll get students to
deliberately introduce mistakes into code so that they can see what
happens. I'll also be there while they are trying to rewrite sample
code from memory, and give them help then. This is similar to what I've
done before, but I'm going to emphasise errors and debugging a bit more
than before.

(iv) Syntax colourisation. Hmmm.... I've sort of missed this one this
year. I think it's a good idea, but couldn't find a simple piece of
software to do this so that I could cut and paste syntax colourised
code into my slides. At least not in a short search. Though upgrading
the notes to use syntax colourisation will be something I could do for
"next year".

(v) Comp.edu. I'll be posting there in a few minutes.

(vi) The online Java book. Will be one of my prescribed texts.
Partially because I prefer to minimise expense for students, and this
allows me to make two texts prescribed texts.

Cheers,

Ross-c

.