It Seemed Like a Good Idea At the Time

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It Seemed Like a Good Idea At the Time

• Suzanne (no last name given)
• at a university somewhere in the southwest US

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A CS 1 assignment that seemed like a good idea at
the time in spring 2000

• And the time in fall 2000
• And the time in fall 2001
• And the time in fall 2002
• And the time in fall 2003
• And the time in fall 2004
• And the time in fall 2005
• And the time in fall 2006
• See a pattern??

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Alternate Title

• My sad tale of assigning (and assigning!) an
  interesting, multi-part problem for students to
  have a chance to explore algorithms, practice
  problem-solving, practice combining control
  structures, understand the use of methods and
  parameters, and have fun in a CS 1 class! Or so
  I thought.

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It all started in spring 2000

• Assigned Flesch Readability Index problem
  (from Cay Horstmanns Computing Concepts with
  Java Essentials)
• Calculates a value that indicates the average
  reading level (5th grader through Law school
  grad)
• 206.835 84.6(number of syllables / number of
  words) 1.015(number of words / number of
  sentences).

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• Write a class - Paragraph
• Store the paragraph as a String
• Idea build up a paragraph given a String, find
  the number of words, sentences, syllables and
  append it to any previously entered text
• Methods to return number of syllables (private),
  words, sentences, lines to calculate Flesch
  Index, educational level of audience
• Students gripedOK, on the right track
• Lots of questionsgood, theyre looking at it
• More than usual didnt do it!...not so good

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So next time, Fall 2000

• Hmmmthis is a good problem, how can it be more
  fun? (finding syllables was a problem)
• How about finding palindromes?
• And converting words to Pig Latin is fun, right?
  (Igpay Atinlay!)
• Still build up a paragraph, count words,
  sentences (.), questions (?), exclamations
  (!) call a method multiple times with
  different parameters.

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Fall 2000 Issues

• Now a problem finding groups of consonants for
  Pig Latin
• And how do you find a vowel?
• So, still a bit of frustration and higher than
  usual number of dropped assignments.
• Undergrad Section Leaders From This is a great
  problem! to Some students wont even try! to
  Half my section dropped this one.

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And so it wentmaybe if I give more support this
will work

• Fall 2001 Paragraph back to Flesch Index
• Fall 2002 Paragraph back to palindromes and
  Pig Latin, dont worry about capitalizations
• Fall 2003 Paragraph gave pseudocode for Pig
  Latin
• Fall 2004 BunchOText work in pairs 2 points
  extra credit for handling capitalizations

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• Fall 2005 TextFun did part of it in a closed
  lab pairs
• Seven times is more than enough thats it!
• Fall 2006 WordProcessor (Section Leaders
  convinced me to use it again) did all of the Pig
  Latin part in a closed lab and gave out the
  solution pairs
• Fall 2007 gave it as an extra credit project
  only only 10 out of 165 tried it
• Fini

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Class info and trends

• Large classes - 150 to 230
• Usually about 1/3 didnt do this assignment
  (could drop one assignment)
• Drop rate on previous assignment about 1/5
• Slightly more did the following assignment, but
  not as many as before it
• Some (small) number of people never did another
  assignment!

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Lessons Learned

• Undergraduate Section Leaders dont always know
  more than I do about what their peers will like
  (or else they want them to suffer, too)
• Students didnt successfully cheat on it
• Some people never learn mainly me
• Pig Latin is not the universal language of fun
• Sometimes we just have to let things go
• Maybe I should have done something with pirates?
  They love pirates