I/O Considered Harmful (At least for the first few weeks)

One of the major difficulties with teaching the first programming course is input/output. It is desirable to show students how to input data and output results early in the course in order to motivate the students and so that they can see the results of their programs. Output is also a useful tool for testing programs. However, in most programming languages input and output are esoteric and the techniques for performing input and output must be learnt by the students at an early stage, precisely when they are trying to understand the basics of programming. We argue that input/output operations need not be taught in the early stages of a course if the language environment provides appropriate tools for testing programs. This assertion is demonstrated by reference to the Blue objectoriented language and environment

Vicarious learning through capturing task‐directed discussions

The vicarious learner group has been developing a multimedia database system to promote and enhance the role of dialogue in learning. A specific interest, and the origin of the projects' collective name, is in the question of whether and how dialogue can be helpfully ‘reused’. What benefits can students gain from dialogue as observers, not just as participants? We describe our initial attempts to generate and capture educationally effective discourse exchanges amongst and between students and tutors. Problems encountered with available CMC discourse formats led to our development of a set of Task Directed Discussions (TDDs). A medium‐sized corpus of discourse exchanges was collected using the TDDs. A selection of nearly two hundred of these TDD exchanges formed the multimedia discourse database to the implemented prototype system, Dissemination. Initial results from a controlled experiment and evaluation of Dissemination are outline

Pedagogy: How to best teach population health to future healthcare leaders

Our healthcare system is moving from a fee-for-service reimbursement model to one that provides payment for improvements in three areas related to care: quality, coordination, and cost. Healthcare organizations must use a population health approach when delivering care under this new paradigm. Health administration programs play a critical role in training future leaders of healthcare organizations to be adaptable and effective in this dynamic environment. The purpose of this research was to: (1) engage health administration educators in a dialogue about population health and its relevance to healthcare administration education; (2) describe pedagogical methods appropriate for teaching population health skills and abilities needed for successful careers in our healthcare environment; and (3) identify current student learning outcomes that participants can tailor to utilize in their undergraduate and graduate health management courses. Authors conducted focus groups of participants attending this educational session at the 2018 annual AUPHA meeting. Qualitative analysis of the focus group discussions identified themes by a consensus process. Study findings provide validated recommendations for population health in the health administration curriculum. The identification of pedagogical approaches serves to inform educators as they prepare future health administrators to practice in this new era of healthcare delivery

Benefits, Limitations and Best Practices of Online Coursework…Should Accounting Programs Jump on Board?

The evolution of online teaching has evolved as quickly and vivaciously as the adoption of the World Wide Web. While there were and are skeptics, research shows that not only is online learning more convenient and makes educational available anytime and anywhere, it has the potential, in some cases, to be an improved tool for educating. To ensure maximized learning outcomes, and to experience the blessing and not the curse of online coursework, it is critical that universities embrace it wholeheartedly and follow online pedagogical best practices in developing and executing online courses. In addition, there are some courses where special forethought should be made to ensure online learning is effective. Courses that are more computational necessitate this consideration. This document serves to provide strategies and best practices on how to obtain excellence and maximized outcomes from online education. It examines research to date and outlines: the benefits and challenges of online learning, strategies and best practices for online educating, and considerations for online accounting coursework

An Intelligent Tutoring System for Teaching the 7 Characteristics for Living Things

Recently, due to the rapid progress of computer technology, researchers develop an effective computer program to enhance the achievement of the student in learning process, which is Intelligent Tutoring System (ITS). Science is important because it influences most aspects of everyday life, including food, energy, medicine, leisure activities and more. So learning science subject at school is very useful, but the students face some problem in learning it. So we designed an ITS system to help them understand this subject easily and smoothly by analyzing it and explaining it in a systematic way. In this paper, we describe the design of an Intelligent Tutoring System for teaching science for grade seven to help students know the 7 characteristics for living things smoothly. The system provides all topics of living things and generates some questions for each topic and the students should answer these questions correctly to move to the next level. In the result of an evaluation of the ITS, students like the system and they said that it is very useful for them and for their studies

Knowledge tree: Putting discourse into computer‐based learning

Most CBL materials currently in use model only the declarative aspects of the learning process. If such courseware is used without careful planning, this can be dangerous because one of the most fundamental aspects of education is the dialogue that occurs between teachers and the students. Traditionally, this has taken place in informal discussions as well as in formal small‐group learning sessions such as the conventional tutorial. However, as the student‐staff ratio increases, so does the opportunity for this type of personal dialogue decrease. Modern networking technology offers a huge potential to add discourse to CBL, but there are many pedagogical problems involved with the intrinsically ephemeral and anarchic nature both of the Internet and of most conferencing or bulletin‐board systems. In this paper we describe a software system called Knowledge Tree (KT) which we have developed to address some of these issues. KT combines a hierarchical concept‐oriented database functionality with that of a Usenet‐style bulletin board Using this, a knowledge garden may be developed for any subject area. These each contain a hypermedia database of frequently asked questions, together with answers provided by subject experts. There is provision for inter‐student discussions of problems and issues. When students ask new questions these are automatically emailed to a relevant subject expert (determined by a subject‐specific concept thesaurus). The answer is then placed in the database which eventually grows to become a valuable teaching resource. KT is discipline‐independent as the concept thesaurus can be changed to encapsulate any domain of knowledge. We have used it in support of conventional lecture courses, as an important component of a multimedia course, and for general IT support. These examples illustrate the role that this system can play both in basic information provision, and in facilitating the discussion of deep issues

An evaluation of a professional learning network for computer science teachers

This paper describes and evaluates aspects of a professional development programme for existing CS teachers in secondary schools (PLAN C) which was designed to support teachers at a time of substantial curricular change. The paper’s particular focus is on the formation of a teacher professional development network across several hundred teachers and a wide geographical area. Evidence from a series of observations and teacher surveys over a two-year period is analysed with respect to the project’s programme theory in order to illustrate not only whether it worked as intended, by why. Results indicate that the PLAN C design has been successful in increasing teachers’ professional confidence and appears to have catalysed powerful change in attitudes to learning. Presentation of challenging pedagogical content knowledge and conceptual frameworks, high-quality teacher-led professional dialogue, along with the space for reflection and classroom trials, triggered examination of the teachers’ own current practices