Lab-Based Teaching - Guide to Teaching Computer Science: An Activity-Based Approach - page 137

efficiently. It should be remembered, though, that the exact doze of lab-based teach-
ing should be seriously considered in each case in order to vary the teaching meth-
ods employed in the said teaching situation. This important role of the teacher in
lab-based teaching situations explains the importance of including this topic in the
MTCS course.
Activities 61 and 62 illuminate the computer lab as a learning environment. Dur-
ing their facilitation, central themes of the computer lab, mentioned above, can be
integrated.
Activity 61: Analyzing a Computer Science Lesson in the Computer Lab
The students are presented with a video clip that takes place in the computer
lab. After the clip is presented, the instructor of the MTCS course and the
students analyze it, addressing questions such as: What is unique in this situ-
ation? In what ways does it differ from the traditional way of teaching com-
puter science? What is the teacher's role in this situation? The role of this
discussion is to identify the advantages and challenges of learning and teach-
ing computer science in the computer lab (as described above). The advan-
tages and the challenges involved in this learning environment are addressed
also in the continuation of this chapter, with respect to the different usages of
the computer lab in computer science education.
If such a clip is not available, a similar activity can be facilitated based on
students' observation of a real lesson that takes place in a high school com-
puter lab. Prior to the actual observation, the students should be guided by
questions, such as: How does the teacher behave in the lesson? How are the
lessons managed? How do pupils behave? How do the pupils behave when
they face difficulties? How are tasks presented to the pupils? Do pupils work
individually, in pairs, in groups? If they work in groups, how is the work
divided among the pupils in the group?
Activity 62: A “Dry” Lab
This activity is inspired by The Little LISPer (Friedman and Felleisen 1986 )
topic, which demonstrates a pedagogical approach which is closely related to
the constructivist approach present in Chap. 2. According to this approach,
learners can gain better understanding of the concepts they learn by forming
their own definitions based on a guided exploration, than by being presented
with well-defined terminology of the learned concepts by the teacher.
The students get the worksheet presented in Table 8.1 , in which they are asked
to reveal the meaning of the instructions of a programming language called
DL (dry lab). The worksheet is worked on without computers. In computer
science classes, the worksheet can be worked on with respect to general pro-
gramming languages.