Community of Practice: learning the craft of programming

Peter D Chalk

UNL >>> LondonMet ???homepages.north.londonmet.ac.uk/~chalkp/pub.htm

2nd LTSN-ICS one day conference on the Teaching of Programming, 22/3/02, University of Wolverhampton (invited paper).

Community of Practice

Pioneers: Lave & Wengermutual engagement, joint enterprise,

shared repertoireLegitimate Peripheral Participation in

expert activity Apprenticeship learning & scaffoldinge.g. finishing garments, using and making

tools, authentic tasks, situated learning

Software engineering & HCI Learning Communities

Use of VLE - e.g. WebCTUse of tools - e.g. JSP EditorUse of learning objects - Jscript, STDsProvision of code/classes & continuous

assessmentMaking tools & projectsWebworlds & learning pathsMethods of research - ethnographic

Tools & techniques

Webworlds - JSP Editor, visualisers (CASE tolls?)

Authentic tasks - engineer, construct, test, design, metrics, execute model

VLE - communication, file store, assessment management, container for learning objects

HCI in cyberspace, Preece

JSP Editor

Java Flowgraph Editor

Research & assessment

Encourage, monitor, evaluate and assess learning?

Variety, continuous & authentic tasksData: weekly exercises in log & VLEStored documents, comments &

responses > learning pathsReflective essays > higher orderActivity theory & negotiation

Learning data example - chat room

LD>>I think we may be allowed to use flash script to do the programming

LD>>rather than javascript DT>>ok that's good DT>>that's more of HCI LD>>i do not know how to write scripts using flash

script ... LD>>yeah UB and N are experts at flash script DT>>he got 90 right? DT>>ok that nice to hear

Tracking engagement

Learning paths (s=student; t=tutor;

ww=webworld; d=diagram; c=comment; l=link; sa=store; r=read; 3/4=date)

s

d1

t

c1

d1a

s 3/4

sa 7/4

r 5/4

r 9/4

sa 11/4

ww

l 3/4, 11/4

Preliminary results BSCW team areas, event lists

and documents recorded, metrics & results analysed.

Mark is a crude measure of their learning.

Students who responded to feedback and improved their model achieved an A or B grade.

Students of higher marks had most days when BSCW events occurred.

Grp Webworkmark

Grpsize

Usedweb

EventsinBSCW

Dayswhenhits

Learnpaths

H1 A+ 4 4 49 13 1

H2 B+ 5 2 37 5 0

H4 A- 3 3 11 4 0

C2 A 4 4 75 16 1

C3 A 2 2 16 5 0

C6 A 3 3 42 10 0

C11 D 4 0 0 0 0

C12 A+ 4 4 107 14 1

C14 A+ 4 4 98 11 1

Textual (grounded) analysis

JSP Editor

Freq. &access

"We are now familiar with itsuse and confident using it"

+ 4

Attitude "Don't like it" - 2

"Useful when designing" + 21ToolUsability "Lacks complete notation" - 6

Execute "Differences can be seenbetween generated C code &the Sort Web site"

+ 15

"Very interesting that tools [& code] used by engineers can be found”[Apprenticeship in CoP]

"I know there are errors in his design as I was unable to illustrate the nested loops in the generated code”[Feedback in CoP]

"When I accessed his flowgraph I found an obvious mistake”[Collaborative learning in CoP]

Conclusions

Wenger: "discovering how to engage... developing mutual relationships... struggling to define the enterprise... developing their repertoire... adopting tools... recording and recalling events”

Virtual apprenticeship using tools & techniques appropriate to subject

Conclusions on introductory programming

Expressive modelling & authentic programs (pre-supplied components)

Shared tools & techniques (e.g. JSP)Continuous assessment & scaffoldingLPP in CoP, e.g. through joint enterprise

& mutual engagement (VLE & Web)Plug: JICC 7 Monday 27 Jan 2003 at

UNL/ LondonMet (?) on teaching Java

References (shameless)

Chalk, P. D. Evaluating the use of a virtual learning environment for teaching aspects of HCI, ACM ITiCSE Conference, Aarhus, Denmark (2002).

Chalk, P. D. Learning software engineering in a community of practice: a case study. Proceedings of the LTSN-ICS 2nd annual conference (UNL, London, August 2001), 30-34.

Chalk, P. D. Webworlds - Web-based modeling environments for learning software engineering. Journal of Computer Science Education 10.1 (1999).

Chalk, P. D. Survey of Webworlds for Software Engineering Education. Proceedings of the 7th Annual Conference on the Teaching of Computing, Belfast Aug 25-27 (1999), 37-41.

References (famous)

Wenger, E. Communities of Practice: Learning, Meaning and Identity, Cambridge University Press (1998).

Nardi, B. A. (Ed.) Context and Consciousness: Activity Theory And Human-Computer Interaction, Cambridge MA: MIT Press (1996).

Preece, J. Online communities: designing usability and supporting sociability. Wiley, 2000.

Lave, J. and Wenger, E. Situated Learning: Legitimate Peripheral Participation, Cambridge University Press (1991).

Suchman, L. A., Plans and situated actions: the problem of human-machine communication. Cambridge University Press (1987).