A collection of tips for writing programming labs.

Principles

  • Communicate clearly.
  • Spend students time wisely.
  • Focus on specific learning goals.

Tips

  • Explain the purpose of the lab and how it will help the student.

  • Have clear done criteria

    • Explain the goal of the lab and the conditions under which a student should move on.
    • Lab tasks written in an open ended way can lead students to spend time on them beyond what is useful for their learning. Students should know when to get help and when to move on.

  • Write Programming labs in markdown.

    • markdown provides support for programming text highlighting and allows copy and paste from the lab.

  • Provide any text you want students to output exactly so it can be copied into their program.

    • Don't make students manually write out text from a picture, this isn't a good use of their time.

  • Provide any starting code you want students to play with in program files.

    • Do not make students copy this code into separate files.

  • Code Samples in markdown files should be between code blocks ``` do not use > blocks for code.

  • If asking students to predict a value, make sure there is an equivalent step to check that their prediction is correct.

    • I found in an exercise on predicting simple expression outputs in Python there was a section to predict both resulting type and value. There was a check for the actual value, but not for the actual type. It's important to provide the check or students can walk away without correcting their prediction.

  • Make sure there is enough room in tables for students answers, especially if copy and pasting responses.

  • Follow up any exercises that ask students for predictions by providing better rules for future predictions.

  • If using Markdown avoid adding HTML tags to the markdown as not all markdown readers render it properly.

    • Instead of color, apply bold and italic to draw attention.

  • Use the term Natural Number or Integer depending on which you mean.

    • Do NOT use the term Whole Number

  • Teach formatting string literals so students don't was time doing a bunch of plusses.

  • Teach input redirection from a text file so students don't have to continuously type in things to test their program. This also gives them test cases to check against.

    python main.py < test.txt

  • Input validation, go over different types.

    • number ranges
    • static list
    • strings determining it's part of speech and spelling is hard. Use API.

  • If referencing something else provide a link, don't merely say 'this is a concept covered somewhere else'. Give a specific link to that somewhere else.

  • Have repository of good solutions to common problems (these are buildings blocks for programs)

    • list of numbers 0 to n -1 list(range(n))
    • list of characters a-z plus other groups of characters

  • After the programming lab present a potential solution

    • show the approach to the solution (How did you get the answer?)
    • show any tips and tricks
    • explain the final piece of code
    • The potential solution is

  • Teach input validation

    • Is a Natural number isnumeric
    • Is an integer (careful, negative numbers, are tricky)
      • PEP: Python should provide an isinteger method for strings.
    • Is a float
      • PEP: Python should provide an isfloat method for strings.

  • Debugging

    • Testing individual values and small snips in the console.
    • Use of type to check a variables type.
    • Explanation that types have different domains.

  • Types

    • Generally it's best to avoid comparing different types.
    • general example is string and integer

  • Careful with or

    • or should only be used in boolean expressions.
    • Python has a confusing property where it returns the value of the first thing if it is truthy. 'a' or 'b' returns 'a'

  • Tuples and Lists

    • difference between tuples and lists

  • if else

    • Use if else instead of inverting the expression, that way you can guarantee that only one path is executed. Otherwise risk a bug in either statement potentially executing both.

  • Teach consistent variable naming conventions

    • In Python this would be PEP8 - variables are all lowercase with underscore separating words.
    • Explain how this makes it easier to type variable names and avoid

  • Associates Lists

    • Associate two lists. Use the index of one value in a list to access the value in another list.
    letters = ["a", "b"]
messages = ["a is awesome", "b is best"]

choice = input("pick a letter")

# what if you wanted to make sure you don't look up something that doesn't exist?
index = letters.index(choice)
print(index)

message = messages[index]
print(message)

  • datetime

    • dates, time, and calenders are a complex concept generally we use libraries for these.
    
import datetime

# get the current time
x = datetime.datetime.now()
print(x)

# set the current date / time
x = datetime.datetime(2000, 1, 1)
print(x)

# add time to the date
n = x + datetime.timedelta(days=10)
print(n)

# break out pieces of the date
print(n.year)
print(n.month)
print(n.day)

  • Have students go over their labs with each other when done.

    • Explaining code to peers and answering peer questions reinforces learning and builds explanation skills.
    • Seeing how other students approach can help students gain insights on their own practice.
    • Remember, there are many approaches, explain things in terms of tradeoffs.

Lab Markdown

Consistently use Markdown tags to mean specific things

  • Use the same layout for all projects.

    • This allows students to focus more time on the contents.

  • Use - for all bullets.

  • Use _ for italic.

  • Use __ for bold.

  • Use backtick ` for referring to literal code inline. All code keywords, function names, method names, variable names when referring to literal code. Use backtick for specific pieces of code inline as well.

  • Place spaces between headers and content No, Bad.

    content
# Header
content

    Yes, Good!

    content

# header

content

  • Video Links use youtube [](), Optional: place a picture of the video over the link.

  • Use code fences to display all code with the syntax.

  • Use the phrase answer the following questions for questions, and use numbers to refer to each question.