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Comment by _tom_ | Hacker News Reader

> specifically focusing on lower-level "build blocks" practice

This has been my experience with teaching math and CS.

The biggest causes of failure is not identifying and teaching prerequisite skills.

The key point is prerequisite. Many times the skills needed to pass a math or CS class are not part of that class's curriculum.

Students who have encountered the building blocks already tend to do well, students who have not, tend to fail - no matter how much the class goes over the material in this class - because the problem lies before that material.

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That's where I think specifically the Active exercises can help. We gave students in a CS2 optional typing practice throughout the semester [1]. These students performed better on exams, made higher learning gains and uploaded less buggy code to GitHub for projects. The results were also significant for students that performed below the median on the first midterm and only started doing the exercises AFTER the midterm. Granted, the students were still self-selecting to improve their status, but it does help establish methods for helping even students in higher level courses.

[1] https://dl.acm.org/doi/pdf/10.1145/3373165.3373177

This is my experience as an adult studying calculus, linear algebra, dynamic programming etc.

Calculus is mostly algebra. If you can’t reliably solve algebraic equations, derivatives and integrals will probably be a step too far.

Algebra is mostly arithmetic. If you can’t reliably add and multiply rational numbers, solving for unknowns is going to be patchy at best.

The key part as a student is learning to recognise when I needed to re-tread the primitive operations. Having to go back and practice the mental arithmetic I first learned in primary school was a hit to the ego, but at least I could recognise and take that step. When I was in my late teens / early 20s I was much less able to swallow my pride and back-track.

> When I was in my late teens / early 20s I was much less able to swallow my pride and back-track.

This is, in my opinion, one of the issues with adults attempting to pick up new skills, in addition to that mythical "free time". Many of us have been conditioned that if we aren't masters in something immediately, its a lost cause. If someone suggests that we do "what kids do", then we think we're too "grown up for that". A good example would be tracing drawings. Many kids learn this way, but to suggest an adult do it and provide positive reinforcement in doing it is almost non-existent at the adult level.

Honestly, an adult version of Sesame Street (not "adult" in sex, drugs, violence, but the simplistic dialogue with repetition) may help adults learn a new language, but its competing with other factors like time, general attention, thinking this is "worthy" of our time, etc.

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