[Edu-sig] Student Assignment Styles

[Bryce Embry]

Howdy,
I'm in my first year of teaching computer programming in Python and am 
developing my material based on the How To Think Like A Computer Scientists 
book at www.ibiblio.org/obp.  I have to confess that I fell into teaching 
computer programming without any formal training, and I'm learning a lot of 
the material as we go along (I'm a few steps ahead of the students, but not 
far).

Looking through some of the edu_sig posts, and Timothy Wilson's page at 
http://www.isd197.org/sibley/cs/icp/, I'm seeing that assigning students a 
large project seems to be more popular than assigning a number of smaller, 
more pedantic problems. What is the rationale behind the larger projects as 
opposed to smaller projects?  What are the benefits and drawbacks of asking 
students to spend a week on one large project instead of that same week on 
three or four smaller tasks, then giving a large task once a month or 
so?  I've been using what I consider to be smaller projects (my stuff is at 
http://www.bembry.org/tech/python/index.shtml ) and am wondering if fewer, 
larger projects would be better for my kids.


-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Bryce Embry
--- Geek of All Trades, Master of None
--- Margolin Hebrew Academy
--- 390 South White Station
--- Memphis, TN 38117
--- (901) 682-2409