A Handbook for Teaching and Learning in Higher Education Enhancing academic and Practice

Computing science
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skill is minimal. Some institutions have developed programs where the curriculum is
more focused on the application of software and software packages, with less focus on
the design and development of software itself. Nevertheless, the demand for skilled
programmers is increasing and academics must consider carefully how best to deal
with the problems associated with programming in order to provide better student
support.
Case study 1: Teaching programming
Teaching computer programming is indeed a problem. At the heart of the
problem lies the very nature of the skill itself; programming is something that is
best learnt over a long time and with a great deal of practice. This is not a learning
model that fits happily in today’s still prevailingly lecture-based and often
semesterised higher education system.
There is a danger in any lecture setting that students can become little more than
passive recipients of information conveyed by the lecturer. The old cliché has this
information passing from the notes of the lecturer into the notes of the student,
and passing through the minds of neither. This scenario might be acceptable, or
even effective, in some disciplines, but it is absolutely fatal when programming
is being taught or learnt.
The key to making lectures on programming more effective is for the ‘lecturer’ to
make the students participate. The students should be active participants rather
than passive recipients. There are many ways in which this can be done – the only
limitation is the imagination of the lecturer. The following are some examples.
Parameter passing
There are usually two forms of parameter passing supported in a programming
language, and the difference is subtle, especially for novices. The essential
difference between parameters passed as values and those passed as references
can be illustrated with a simple demonstration.
Armed with some sample functions, accepting a variety of parameters, the
instructor can record the values of variables on the back of a collection of Frisbees.
Different colours of Frisbee, or different sizes, can be used to indicate different
variable types. The sample functions can be ‘walked through’, and a student (or
group) is nominated to carry out this process; they are passed the appropriate
parameters by the instructor. Where a value parameter is required, the instructor
simply reads out the value. But if a reference parameter is used, the value
(the Frisbee) must itself be passed to the students representing the function. If
the function changes the value of the variable, the students must change the