Examplar: A better way to teach programming (make students make the examples)

They talk about how the difficulty in teaching is in knowing what the students know. But just asking them doesn't give us enough information:

> So we have the kernel of a good idea—asking students to read back their understanding—but words are a poor medium for it.

Their solution, of making students come up with examples, basically serves to map out their understanding and whether they are falling into common misconceptions

> we think of Examplar as performing what we call conceptual mutation testing: we only want to make sure they have the right conception of the problem, and avoid misconceptions about it.

This seems really powerful to me. In some ways it's like test driven development. In another way, it's like going into reading a complex article with a list of guiding questions, mapping out what you think the article is saying, and having a system (either automated or a human teacher) correct you/guide you in the right direction