Teaching Methods in Computer Science Education - Guide to Teaching Computer Science: An Activity-Based Approach - page 103

The teaching methods presented in this chapter are pedagogical tools (Sect. 7.2),
different forms of class organization (Sect. 7.3), and mentoring software project
development (Sect. 7.4).
For each teaching method, we first outline its meaning, target, and importance
in computer science education. Then, we present active-learning-based activities to
be facilitated in the MTCS course. The actual facilitation of these activities in the
MTCS course is important since the students should sense how their future high
school pupils will feel when they, as computer science teachers, will employ these
teaching methods in their high school classes.
We note that several of the teaching methods presented in this chapter are il-
lustrated also in other chapters of this guide when the focus is placed on another
pedagogical topic.

7.2 Pedagogical Tools

In this section, we review the following pedagogical tools:

• Pedagogical games (Sect. 7.2.1)
• The CS-unplugged approach (Sect. 7.2.2)
• Rich tasks (Sect. 7.2.3)
• Concept maps (Sect. 7.2.4)
• Classification (Sect. 7.2.5)
• Metaphors (Sect. 7.2.6)

7.2.1 Pedagogical Games

Games have a great pedagogical potential. A well-planned game enables to learn
new concepts in an alternative class atmosphere, involves social interaction, intro-
duces a change in the teaching method, and is a kind of activity that all students
are good at. Games, as other pedagogical tools, may also have disadvantages, such
as the chaos that a game may cause in the class, dominant students' takeover of
the game process, learners' disagreement to participate in an activity they conceive
childish, and teacher's inability to control the class as they do in traditional teaching
settings. Table 7.1 summarizes some advantages and disadvantages of games from
pedagogical, social, and emotional perspectives.
We note that we discuss here neither computer games nor game programming
(e.g., as in Lakanen et al. 2014 ), which has become popular recently also in com-
puter science education (see Activity 48); rather, we focus on social games that
aim at teaching computer science ideas, which can be played either with or without
computers. We note also that the use of games as a pedagogical tool is mentioned
also in the next section, which focuses on the CS-unplugged approach, which is
a computer science teaching method which is largely based on noncomputerized
games and activities.