[Edu-sig] 9. Best approach to teaching OOP and graphics

[Lloyd Hugh Allen]

On Wed, 23 Mar 2005 14:02:15 +0200, Linda Grandell <lgrandel at abo.fi> wrote:
> I wonder if letting the students pair up for themselves could work? That
> would more or less be a variant of the second alternative above. Or does
>   this introduce the risk of weaker students pairing up with strong
> students doing less work? Even learning less?

Generally, I would say that letting students on the K-12 level pair
themselves in a totally, totally free fashion leads to less learning.
This strategy often leads to a classroom management nightmare.

With all heterogenous groups (perhaps all groups), it's a good idea to
have assigned tasks (for instance, if the program has already been
flowcharted, then this person is responsible for this area and this
other person is responsible for this area) or differentiated
assessment (in my bf/gf example, to have the weaker student lead you
through the code in order to ensure that even if they didn't come up
with the code, at least they are able to read it).