Ask HN: What are some good strategies to get students to attempt assignments? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: What are some good strategies to get students to attempt assignments?

2 pointsburhanrashid5211 comments

Currently, I am teaching programming on weekends. With my 10 years of industry experience, I understand the significance of hands-on coding experience. However, I am facing the challenge of motivating students to take on and complete assignments, regardless of correctness. My goal is to ensure they engage in practical coding after covering the theoretical aspects in class.

I have tried several approaches, but the results have been not that good: 1. Explaining the importance of assignments and motivating students to attempt them. 2. Introducing a reward for assignment completion; for instance, offering a gift to those who attempt all the assignments. 3. Changing the reward from a physical gift to an Amazon voucher.

During my research on the topic, I came across the book "Why Don't Students Like to Go to School?" In that, the author suggests that the difficulty level of assignments should be just right—not too easy, not too hard. However, in my classes, students seem reluctant to attempt even simple problems. When I ask, they often respond with, "Sorry, I am not able to find time for it."

I would appreciate any suggestions for a more effective solution to this issue.

Age of the students? Is this a voluntary class or a school class?

I got better results with practical classes, each student in one computer. Two or three teachers for 20 students. Wander from student to student givig small advice. Never type, hide your hand behing your back, so the student must write.

I math classes, for homework, I like to write the assigment in the blackboard. If I have time to write it in the blackboard, they consider it more serious. It increase the voluntary homework answers from 10% to 30%. Only one exercice, not two, not ten, just one, but tell them it's important. (We have also a official long list of exercices, but this are additional selected important exercices.)

I am running online classes to teach programming with 1-3 YOE. Age ranging from 18-25

Online clases are bad because you can not go to each desk to give a personal advice to each student :( . At 18-25 years, most of them are not mature enough to learn alone.

My sugestion is to have the official long list of exercices, but also have an official 1 exectice that each clas, and waste 5 or 10 minutes showing that exercice (In a blackboard I'd sugest writing it. In a online class, just read it aloud slowly.) They are 5 wasted minutes, but that gives a strong impression that the crazy guy in charge of the class cares about that exercice. Remember to waste another 5 minutes asking for the solution of the exercice next class.

More context: Its online classes I am conducting with a dev with 1-2 years of experiences

In a class with grades a certain fraction of the grade is homework, if it is a large enough fraction you can’t pass without doing the homework. For instance in a typical “CS 101” course at a uni you are expected to write a bunch of little programs which will be graded by the instructor or a TA usually using some kind of integration test. (I think a lot of people take a class like that and don’t realize how important automated testing is to it..)

Another approach is to put people into a lab situation where they do some exercises when the group is together.

Its online classes. And manging group online is kind a hard.

I suspect students and employees, would be more inclined to do their assignments if those assigning the work had read, understood, and then implemented, some of the ideas proposed in Drive by Daniel H. Pink, and No Rules Rules by Reed Hastings & Erin Meyer. :-)

"if those assigning the work had read, understood, and then implemented," I did not understand. Do you the assignment should be clear enough ?

It sounds like your students consider programming a chore (or work), instead of a hobby or something fun... are you and/or your students doing these lessons for fun, or for money/career?

I don't think so. They paid money and showing up. It's more of advancing your knowledge from beginner to advanced in building mobile applications. More effectiveflutterdev.com here

Sometimes paying money means buying a certificate to add a line to the CV. Sometimes means beeing very interested in the subject. YMMV.

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