[Grace-core] Fwd: SNAPL 2015: reviews for paper 31: Teaching with Grace (Abstract)

[Kim Bruce]

Here are the reviews of the Teaching with Grace abstract that I submitted.  The abstract is sitting in the svn repository in GracePapers/SNAPL.

Kim



> Begin forwarded message:
> 
> Date: February 20, 2015 at 10:35:00 AM PST
> From: SNAPL 2015 <snapl2015 at easychair.org>
> To: Kim Bruce <kim at cs.pomona.edu>
> Subject: SNAPL 2015: reviews for paper 31: Teaching with Grace (Abstract)
> 
> Dear Kim: I apologize for my earlier snafu. Below you should find your reviews.
> 
> Shriram
> 
> 
> ----------------------- REVIEW 1 ---------------------
> PAPER: 31
> TITLE: Teaching with Grace (Abstract)
> AUTHORS: Kim Bruce
> 
> 
> ----------- REVIEW -----------
> The author has created a simple OO programming language (Grace) for teaching introductory programming courses and reports on preliminary experience. I very much like the idea of
> creating a simplified PL designed for novices, especially in this day and age where 
> "everyone should learn to program".  I think that the author will get good discussion
> going on this important topic.
> 
> 
> ----------------------- REVIEW 2 ---------------------
> PAPER: 31
> TITLE: Teaching with Grace (Abstract)
> AUTHORS: Kim Bruce
> 
> 
> ----------- REVIEW -----------
> It is hard to think of how to evaluate a 1-page abstract. But the
> topic is certainly very interesting, the presenter is exciting,
> the abstract is well-written, and generally I think it will be
> a welcome short presentation at the conference. 
> 
> Specifics:
> -I am a little surprised that there is little emphasis on the fact
> that the current implementation does not fully support static type
> checking! I think there could be interesting insights there on
> the use of static typing in a first CS course.
> 
> -Similarly, I am not entirely convinced that it's a great thing to
> have students not install anything on their computers but do all
> their programming in a browser. Programming is hard. People who are
> not comfortable with basic *usage* of a computer (i.e., installing
> programs) stand no chance. It is a huge effort in my department to
> impress upon freshmen that if they haven't even installed the tools
> on a computer they control (and instead do all homework in the lab or
> in pairs, on another student's computer) they will certainly fail!
> 
> In any case, it is intriguing. I would love to see our students not
> get distracted by anything else, in a controlled environment, but I
> do wonder if this will make them learn programming more easily.  It's
> a more general pedagogical question and may also have to do with the
> students' age. For instance, for young children and for natural
> (foreign) language learning, an environment without natural
> distractions and overhead of a different culture is believed to be
> worse than naturally picking up a language in an environment full of
> distractions (i.e., the things that people who speak the foreign
> language do and which have nothing to do with language learning).
> I'm certainly not an expert, so I'm only wondering aloud.
> 
> -"By 10 weeks into the course we were 1 week ahead of the Java-based
>  sections of the course." This seems like an extremely minor difference,
> especially given the possibility of confirmation bias. The observer
> expected a difference, right? The followup "student performances ...
> on the midterm and labs were at least as strong ... even th*r*ough
> we moved at an accelerated pace" also seems very weak.
> 
> 
> ----------------------- REVIEW 3 ---------------------
> PAPER: 31
> TITLE: Teaching with Grace (Abstract)
> AUTHORS: Kim Bruce
> 
> 
> ----------- REVIEW -----------
> This is a two page summary on an experimental version of an introductory programming course at Pomona that uses Grace.    The premise is that the simplicity of Grace will make it a better teaching language that Java and the summary mentions some preliminary (non scientific) evidence of the fact.   I think a discussion of what is a good introductory teaching language would be a great discussion to have at SNAPL, and therefore support this paper given that it will present one point of view---especially if we have other papers on the topic with opposing views.
> 

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