hey mastodon, throw all your programming pedagogy links at me. I teach a lot of beginner programmers and I want to get better at it!
specifically the trouble I have is getting beginners from the "I understand the syntax and can modify examples" stage to the "I can model problems as programs and apply my knowledge of the language to build these programs" stage. the first stage is pretty easy and most tutorials for beginners are oriented toward that kind of literacy... the second is harder to achieve and harder to teach, and it seems like most people only reach that stage with self-directed practice
@aparrish sorry, this is not an answer, but I want to say that this totally mirrors my experience and I hadn't seen it described before. For a decade I kept re-learning that first stage and it took forever (and a project-based book, and a project I cared about) to make the leap to the second step
@cfbolz @xor I teach mostly artists in a self-directed setting (masters degree art program). my experience is that even motivated people with a project they care about will often fail to make the leap (usually finding a solution with a perceived lower effort gradient, e.g., using pre-built code examples with little modification or collaborating with a more experienced peer)
@cwm I'm familiar with openframeworks—some of the faculty here at ITP use it as well. my problem is that I just really don't like C++ :)
@xor @aparrish yes, I think the 'project to care about' is usually what is needed to make people really learn the second stage. But how to get this caring in a lecture setting?