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Using counter-examples in the data structures course

Author:

Alan FeketeAuthors Info & Claims

ACE '03: Proceedings of the fifth Australasian conference on Computing education - Volume 20

Pages 179 - 186

Published: 01 January 2003 Publication History

Abstract

In many computer science courses, students face a sequence of activities that is quite monotonous in style: most assignments and labs ask the student to write a program that does something, to follow a procedure, or else to prove something. We advocate varying the pattern by including different types of activity which bring students to reflect on their ideas and especially to confront directly common misconceptions. We use the traditional "data structures" subject as the domain in which to present this approach to teaching. We give detailed accounts of several activities that include debugging wrong code and explaining the misconception in an argument.

References

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Cited By

Porter LZingaro DLee CTaylor CWebb KClancy MBarnes TGarcia DHawthorne EPérez-Quiñones M(2018)Developing Course-Level Learning Goals for Basic Data Structures in CS2Proceedings of the 49th ACM Technical Symposium on Computer Science Education10.1145/3159450.3159457(858-863)Online publication date: 21-Feb-2018
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3159450.3159457
Karpierz KWolfman SDougherty JNagel KDecker AEiselt K(2014)Misconceptions and concept inventory questions for binary search trees and hash tablesProceedings of the 45th ACM technical symposium on Computer science education10.1145/2538862.2538902(109-114)Online publication date: 5-Mar-2014
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/2538862.2538902
Dukielska MSroka JAyfer RImpagliazzo JLaxer C(2010)JavaSpaces NetBeansProceedings of the fifteenth annual conference on Innovation and technology in computer science education10.1145/1822090.1822099(23-27)Online publication date: 26-Jun-2010
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/1822090.1822099
Show More Cited By

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Information & Contributors

Information

Published In

cover image DL Hosted proceedings

ACE '03: Proceedings of the fifth Australasian conference on Computing education - Volume 20

January 2003

279 pages

ISBN:0909925984

Editors:
Tony Greening
University of Sydney
,
Raymond Lister
University of Technology, Sydney

Publisher

Australian Computer Society, Inc.

Australia

Publication History

Published: 01 January 2003

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ACE '03

ACE '03: Computing education

01 02 2003

Adelaide, Australia

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Overall Acceptance Rate 161 of 359 submissions, 45%

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Cited By

Porter LZingaro DLee CTaylor CWebb KClancy MBarnes TGarcia DHawthorne EPérez-Quiñones M(2018)Developing Course-Level Learning Goals for Basic Data Structures in CS2Proceedings of the 49th ACM Technical Symposium on Computer Science Education10.1145/3159450.3159457(858-863)Online publication date: 21-Feb-2018
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3159450.3159457
Karpierz KWolfman SDougherty JNagel KDecker AEiselt K(2014)Misconceptions and concept inventory questions for binary search trees and hash tablesProceedings of the 45th ACM technical symposium on Computer science education10.1145/2538862.2538902(109-114)Online publication date: 5-Mar-2014
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/2538862.2538902
Dukielska MSroka JAyfer RImpagliazzo JLaxer C(2010)JavaSpaces NetBeansProceedings of the fifteenth annual conference on Innovation and technology in computer science education10.1145/1822090.1822099(23-27)Online publication date: 26-Jun-2010
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/1822090.1822099
Fekete A(2008)Teaching students to develop thread-safe java classesACM SIGCSE Bulletin10.1145/1597849.138430440:3(119-123)Online publication date: 30-Jun-2008
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/1597849.1384304
Fekete AAmillo JLaxer CMenasalvas EYoung A(2008)Teaching students to develop thread-safe java classesProceedings of the 13th annual conference on Innovation and technology in computer science education10.1145/1384271.1384304(119-123)Online publication date: 30-Jun-2008
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/1384271.1384304
Yacef K(2004)Making large class teaching more adaptive with the logic-ITAProceedings of the Sixth Australasian Conference on Computing Education - Volume 3010.5555/979968.980014(343-347)Online publication date: 1-Jan-2004
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.5555/979968.980014

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