Even though we have a Debugging class, we should have a troubleshooting class near the beginning of the quarter to alleviate a lot of the 'easy' questions...such as brackets (how to highlight and problem-solve), quotation-marks (whatever is in red is being written out in the GUI, should not be broken across the lines), organization of pages/folders), semicolons (do not need at the end of methods/if statements), format document (using that to check problem spots), etc.
With the sbss, you become very detail-focused, only looking at one-line of code but not the whole block and what it is supposed to do. I think it would be helpful whenever we are commenting code one line at a time, to step back and say, "ok, what does this whole section actually do?" Personally, it helps me to troubleshoot to know what the whole section does (it is easier to spot the mistakes in the line).
Also, since there is no class in Copeland 014 before Professor Luce's 400 class, I think I am going to add a help session in there when things start ramping up, since I was helping a whole bunch of students working on the homework before class. However, I'm going to warn them that it is right before class and they should not expect me to see everyone and get it fixed, so only as a last-ditch effort.
Troubleshooting is about debugging. From our conversation, it seemde that students did not engage in debugging, till they needed to develop their own projects, which may happen in weeks 5 & 6. Since debugging is only discussed in week 2, we need to find a way to reinforce this towards mid-quarter.
ReplyDeleteE.g. a "debuggable" version of the errors application in MIS420.