School of Computing

Students Asking Questions: Facilitating Questioning Aids Understanding and Enhances Software Engineering Skills

David Barnes

ACM SIGCSE Bulletin, 29(4):182-196, December 1997.

Abstract

By providing a means to ask questions anonymously, we provide a non-threatening environment in which we encourage students to fully understand and criticise their assignments. As well as providing practical assistance for those who are struggling with course work, it demonstrates a practical reinforcement of ideas that are commonly taught in courses on software engineering, but it does so in a context that they can directly relate to - their desire to achieve good grades. The approach is based around the use of an HTML form to enable the anonymous submission of questions to staff and the dynamic refinement of assignment specifications. Examples of its use in a course on object-oriented design and C++ are given.

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Bibtex Record

@article{524,
author = {{D}avid {B}arnes},
title = {{S}tudents {A}sking {Q}uestions: {F}acilitating {Q}uestioning {A}ids {U}nderstanding and {E}nhances {S}oftware {E}ngineering {S}kills},
month = {December},
year = {1997},
pages = {182-196},
keywords = {determinacy analysis, Craig interpolants},
note = {},
doi = {},
url = {http://www.cs.kent.ac.uk/pubs/1997/524},
    journal = {ACM SIGCSE Bulletin},
    number = {4},
    publisher = {Association for Computing Machinery},
    volume = {29},
}

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