Grasping the Unseen: TA Insights into Teaching Subtle Concepts in Computer Science

Pontus Haglund, Linda Mannila, Filip Strömbäck, Aseel Berglund

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Sammanfattning

Conquering fundamental programming concepts that subtly affect program behavior is a challenge for Computer Science (CS) students. Learning parameter passing, aliasing, scope, and references, how they work and being able to reason about them, is crucial for CS students. In this qualitative study we explore how these concepts are taught from the perspective of Teaching Assistants (TAs). Using phenomenographic analysis we find several areas that could be improved regarding the activities and assessments that students are exposed to during their studies. These findings include issues with consistent grading, the training of TAs, the support structures offered to TAs, and variations in the perceived focus on these concepts. Finally, our results highlight a need to explore how proficient TAs are with these concepts.

Originalspråkengelska
Titel på värdpublikationITiCSE 2024 - Proceedings of the 2024 Conference Innovation and Technology in Computer Science Education
Antal sidor7
FörlagAssociation for Computing Machinery
Utgivningsdatum3 juli 2024
Sidor157-163
ISBN (elektroniskt)979-8-4007-0600-4
DOI
StatusPublicerad - 3 juli 2024
MoE-publikationstypA4 Artikel i en konferenspublikation
EvenemangConference Innovation and Technology in Computer Science Education - Milan, Italien
Varaktighet: 8 juli 202410 juli 2024
Konferensnummer: 29

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