Think about exercises for modelling problems

[illicitonion]

We think we could better teach how to model problems - how to take an abstract problem statement and work out how to approach it and how to design a solution to it.

Please contribute ideas for example problems which we can use as exercises. It would be useful to get both examples which would require coding to actually solve, and ones which wouldn't. (e.g. "How would implement scheduled sending of a Slack message" can be reasoned about in terms of things like "I need to write down the message", "What information do I need to write down?", "I need to periodically check whether there are events that should happen", etc, without needing to think about actual code)

[SallyMcGrath]

Oh I just remembered I wrote up a workshop to collect problems that might be used for this. Pasting below:

Code meets world session

I had ______ and I needed _____

Aims

We want to make a board full of real world programming problems so that:

1. The syllabus team will have a repository of real life programming problems they can dip into to make exercises.
2. The trainees will know they are getting experience of the real day to day work of a coder.
3. The volunteers will have a tangible experience of contributing to the syllabus.

Session lead, you need to do these things:

Start a Jam board
Read through this paper and try out adding a sticky note to the board before you start the session.
At the end of the session, put a link to your board in #syllabus-tech.

(You can run this session in person; you need a stack of Post-its and loads of pens. If you are doing this in person, write out three examples and stick them to a wall where everyone can see.)

Some starters are on the board. Read through them with the group.

• I had a list of venues and I needed to find the nearest one to a postcode
• I had a mailing list form and I needed to format the addresses
• I had a full name and I needed the first name
• I had a user and I needed their membership level
• I had three feeds of events and I needed to merge them in order

Notes for you, session lead: Don’t reject things that are too complex for our trainees as we can probably pull something simpler out later, but do insist on the one line “I had X and I needed Y” format. Messy and weird is fine! Specific and obscure is fine! Set a timer for 10 minutes.

Now to the room:

We want everyone to think of a real task they had to do at work. We collect these real world programming problems and use them to write challenges in our syllabus. We’re going to write as many as we can on our board, but we can only use one sentence to do it. And that sentence is:

I had x and I needed y.

Things to know:

• The task can be a small part of probably a larger problem
• It should have really happened and be a real life programming problem you have experienced , even if you didn’t yourself write any code for it (because you’re not a coder, say).
• Don’t think of it in terms of “a time I used map”. Phrase your example like this: I had x and I needed y.

[40thieves]

Farming this out to the wider group of volunteers sounds like a great idea 🙂 I find that coming up with core ideas for exercises is the hardest bit about writing exercises.