#Greenfoot greeps update#
#Greenfoot greeps code#

Also getting pupils to pretend to be the turtle can help, or teacher is turtle. It there a general formula for a polygon. One you have a completed table (4 or 5 entries), you can start to look for a pattern. You can discuss what the best strategy is. Table of angles: | number of sides | angle |

Decide higher of lower (this is often decided wrong, but that is ok).

Made a first guess (common first guesses: 30, 60, 45, 90, 100 ).

However it should then be followed by evaluation.įor example: Trying to find the angle of a triangle, when drawing using turtle graphics. This is an important technique to use some of the time. This is important, to allow them to communicate with a larger team, to allow them to look stuff up on an internet search, and to answer some of the exam questions. How much is because of just fiddle until it works programming. I am wondering how much of this is because they can not express in natural language (don't know terminology). Say, a student is already using meaningful names everywhere, I would not mark her/him down for not writing comments.

#Greenfoot greeps update#

Update : Please note that, during evaluation, I don't expect all of them to be done. Obviously, this makes me their least favourite faculty in terms of evaluation and gets me a lot of complaints but I stick with it.

#Greenfoot greeps code#

In addition to that, those that can write psuedocode above the program code (perhaps in a big block of comments) get some more.Those that can back up their loops, method calls and variable declarations with expansive ( 2 to 3 lines at least) comments get extra points.Those who can use meaningful names for their variables, function calls get extra.Simply getting the output gets them the bare passing grade.This is what I have done to at least handle the issue.īefore assessments, I break down the evaluation to include the following. It's funny how that happens so many times. I have seen my share of this 'program gets output' but the programmer has no clue how she/he got there. It prepares students for the world of coding outside of a class environment, where the majority of time spent is not on isolated exercises, but extending an existing code base.ĭisclaimer: I work in industry and have no research to support this.It rewards production of readable, maintainable code.It maintains the objectivity and automation friendliness of grading on program behavior.It solves your original problem of testing whether students understand the code they have written.Tune the original homework size and the exam requirements changes so that a student who understands the code and has well-written code can complete the exam exercise quickly, but one that started from scratch would not likely be able to complete the work. Then give each student access to the code (s)he submitted for the homework as a starting point for completing the exam exercises. What I would do instead is construct exam exercises that are relatively small requirements changes to homework assignments that students have completed earlier, ideally at least 2 weeks earlier.

So how could you keep these qualities while testing for actual understanding? While I agree that good code structure, variable naming, and possibly comments can offer proof of understanding, they are all highly subjective. Using program correctness for grading has the desirable qualities of being objective and automation friendly. I assume that they do this by some combination of brute force trying things and SO search. If I understand your problem correctly, it's that students can create programs that behave correctly without understanding why they behave correctly.