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When I tutored computer science at the community college, I often felt like some of our students were constantly trying to trick me into writing code for them.

by pxc 5y ago

When I tutored computer science at the community college, I often felt like some of our students were constantly trying to trick me into writing code for them. Idk if other tutors often did that for them or what, but it was frustrating for me. Avoiding getting sucked into touching their keyboards was what I had to do, too.

hnarn 5y ago
I don’t mean to sound cynical, but it’s possible that these students simply got away with this strategy for their entire academic “career” up to that point. I.e. complain about the difficulty of the task, throw your hands up, ask for “help” enough times until the teacher basically solves/explains the entire problem for you and then just copy their exact solution. The idea that a teacher should ever touch a student keyboard in a computer science or programming class to me is absurd.
- pxc 5y ago
  > The idea that a teacher should ever touch a student keyboard in a computer science or programming class to me is absurd. I agree. In this case, the students who seemed to work this way were mostly (all?) ESL students, and none of the tutors spoke the native language of the students. So it could be difficult even to indicate what you wanted them to look at, and it was especially frustrating when the errors they were dealing with were trivial syntax errors.
hdctambien 5y ago
I would see this a lot, too. I think in many cases it is a coping mechanism that they develop and may not even realize they are doing it. You see articles about not praising kids for being "smart" because that praises something innate about them, but instead praise them for working hard or growing or learning. Sometimes kids that are "smart" in middle school don't have to work/learn/study because everything just makes sense. But then they get to high school and their grades start to dip because their "middle school smarts" don't apply to high school material and they didn't develop the skills to study/learn effectively. But they are known as "smart kids" and smart kids get good grades... So they need to find ways to get good grades... because they are "smart kids" I hope I was able to help some of those students unlearn some of those habits and develop more educational ways to "get good grades"

by pxc 5y ago

hnarn 5y ago

I don’t mean to sound cynical, but it’s possible that these students simply got away with this strategy for their entire academic “career” up to that point. I.e. complain about the difficulty of the task, throw your hands up, ask for “help” enough times until the teacher basically solves/explains the entire problem for you and then just copy their exact solution. The idea that a teacher should ever touch a student keyboard in a computer science or programming class to me is absurd.

pxc 5y ago
> The idea that a teacher should ever touch a student keyboard in a computer science or programming class to me is absurd. I agree. In this case, the students who seemed to work this way were mostly (all?) ESL students, and none of the tutors spoke the native language of the students. So it could be difficult even to indicate what you wanted them to look at, and it was especially frustrating when the errors they were dealing with were trivial syntax errors.

hdctambien 5y ago

I would see this a lot, too. I think in many cases it is a coping mechanism that they develop and may not even realize they are doing it. You see articles about not praising kids for being "smart" because that praises something innate about them, but instead praise them for working hard or growing or learning. Sometimes kids that are "smart" in middle school don't have to work/learn/study because everything just makes sense. But then they get to high school and their grades start to dip because their "middle school smarts" don't apply to high school material and they didn't develop the skills to study/learn effectively. But they are known as "smart kids" and smart kids get good grades... So they need to find ways to get good grades... because they are "smart kids" I hope I was able to help some of those students unlearn some of those habits and develop more educational ways to "get good grades"