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opment process of software projects.In this trigger, the students watch a
well-selected video clip of a class working on the development of a soft-
ware project. While the students are watching the video, they are asked
to focus on the teacher's behavior, to write down positive and negative
characteristics of his or her behavior and to imagine how they would act
in similar situations. The video can be paused from time to time for short
discussions.
It is important to select the video very carefully so that it indeed pres-
ents different kinds of situations and different teaching approaches. If it
is selected properly, such a trigger and the stages that follow it let the stu-
dents experience some of the complexity involved in guiding pupils in the
development of software projects.
As mentioned in Sect. 8.2, if such a video is not available, it is possible to
visit a real high school computer science class whose pupils develop soft-
ware projects; alternatively, if this is not an applicable option, the instruc-
tor of the MTCS course can start from Stage C of this activity.
• Stage B: Class discussion
After the video is watched, a class discussion takes place, in which the
behavior of the computer science teacher is analyzed. Here are several
questions that the discussion can concentrate on:
1. What should a computer science teacher know for mentoring software
project development?
2. What challenges does a computer science teacher face in this process?
3. What are the pedagogical advantages of software project development
by computer science learners? What are the disadvantages of such
situations?
• Stage C: Worksheet on PBL situations in computer science education,
group work
The students work in groups on the worksheet presented in Table
7.8
,
whose purpose is to concentrate the students' attention on the details of
class management situations in a computer lab in which learners develop
software projects.
• Stage D: Class discussion
The dialogues developed by the students in Stage C are presented in front
of the class and discussed. It is reasonable to assume that different kind of
responses will be suggested for each statement. In all cases, however, it
is appropriate to analyze what aspects are addressed in the presented sce-
narios: Did it focus on computer science concepts? Was the help given by
the computer science teacher technical? Did the teacher's response address
pupil's emotions? Did the teacher's response address other motivational
factors?
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