Sunday, December 17, 2017

Experience with Adult Learners...

It's been a while since my last post. Life seems to get a little too busy at times.

Recently completed an evening instruction term teaching adults how to program in Java and introducing very basic principles of software development. My assessment of the experience? Fantastic! It always helps to have really patient and motivated adult learners as students. Fantastic group! The students ranged from blue collar to technical writers. I love teaching adults!

I continue to develop the curriculum for my Introduction to Java and Software Development course. This recent experience has inspired me to be a little more ambitious and introduce concepts earlier. I am also very happy that the introduction of GUIs earlier in the curriculum worked so well. GUI programming truly brings greater enthusiasm for programming.

For the Spring session, I will introduce a more streamlined method for students to organize their programs AND a new GUI based application that is capable of reading strings. I am convinced it will be a 'wow' moment for the students.

I will also be teaching a similar course to my high school students, but recent observations lead me to believe that I will need to be a little more deliberate. Most of the students are freshmen and they do not have strong analytical, problem solving skills.

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