[Edu-sig] Techniques to force students to plan

[Katja Schuerer]

Hello,

On Fri, Nov 15, 2002 at 10:57:56AM -0600, Tim Wilson wrote:
> Hi everyone,
> 
> So what works? Is anyone aware of a technique that may be more effective 
> than flowcharting? I'd love to get some ideas of things to try with our 
> next project.

I'am teaching in a programming cours for biologists. What we are doing, to 
encourage the students to think about the problem before implementing it, is
to write the algorithm in a natural language pseudocode. We do not really
introduce a pseudocode which is even a formal language, but we ask them to
describe their solution in their mother natural language (for us french) and
discuse it before they start the implementation. The technique does not only
help them to design an algorithm, but helps us very often to understand what
the difficulties are for them.

	Katja
--
Katja Schuerer
Computing Center -- Pasteur Institute