How To Teach Computer Science

I always read articles like this one - The 5 Worst Ways to Teach Computer Science – with some trepidation. I always expect to find out that I’m doing it all wrong. The other thing that always concerns me is that the author will be all wrong. Everyone who knows how to code thinks they are an expert in teaching computer science. Many of them are wrong. But this article is a good one. (In other words it mostly talks about doing things the way I already do them.) I think to most experienced CS teachers it is review. I think it is written for teachers who are new to teaching CS though and it fits that role well.

I do think there is a place for individual projects though. Not every project needs to be or even should be a group or team project. So the second thing that article did was get me thinking about good practices.

One of the worst ways to teach computer science that the article doesn’t talk about is Do Everything On The Computer. I am seeing that that can be a real problem. My teaching focus is always concepts first and while after 40 years of writing code a lot of things on the computer seem obvious to me. Not so the “digital natives” I am teaching. Many of them separate real life from what is going on in the computer.

We think they see them as the same because of the social aspects of computer use we observe but I don’t think that is really the case. Young people see the communication aspect of using computers as somewhat parallel to their real life but that is much different from most computer science concepts.
Take counters and accumulators for example. They don’t think in terms of those computer science type words even though they use both in their daily lives. It’s hard for them to make the connection using code. I have them count a hand full of coins. Then I have a student total the value of the coins. Now we can have a conversation about counters and accumulators in the context of a loop.
Speaking of loops I have students walk as a loop. Walk seven steps or walk to this point – demonstrates counting and while/until loops. I’m struggling with how to have them act out recursion though. Ideas?


More and more I am looking for kinesthetic learning that gets students physically involved in computer science concepts. There are some great ideas at CS Unplugged which I use with several classes. “Steal from the best” I always say.
We use some exercises from there when we teach sorting, parity checking, and more. They work well and get students involved. Of course kinesthetic learning is far from just a computer science teaching thing. The growth of maker spaces is one newer aspect of it and “making” has some potential in computer science education. We can also connect computer science to other subjects which will help students learn both/multiple subjects.

The important thing is that we don’t narrow our teaching to just lecture and things the students do on the computer. We have to be more interactive and include ways to get students doing things.