Types of Questions in Computer Science Education - Guide to Teaching Computer Science: An Activity-Based Approach - page 176

Activity 77: Question Formulation, Work in Pairs
First, the students work in pairs and each mate of the pair is asked to develop
an open question on one specific topic from the curriculum. Then, they are
asked to exchange the questions they write, solve the question that their mate
develop, and give a constructive feedback about the question to their mate.
It is important that both mates will develop a question on the same CS topic,
since during the question development they deepen their understanding and
consideration with respect to the specific topic, and consequently, their feed-
back to their mate is more valuable.

9.4.3 Unsolvable Questions

The rational for this specific short discussion stems from the fact that CS learners
should be aware of the fact that not every problem is solvable (see also Chap. 5).
There are incomputable problems—problems that have no solution, meaning, there
is no algorithm that solves them, and further, a proof exists that shows that such
algorithm does not exist. In addition, there are problems that have an algorithmic
solution, but they cannot be computed in practice due to their time complexity.
It is important that a CS educator be aware to the fact that sometimes there is
no hint at whether a problem is solvable or not. Further, from a high school CS
teacher's point of view, the message that should be delivered is that any question
design should be done very carefully. Sometimes questions may look simple, but
their solution may be very complicated or even does not exist.
Hazzan ( 2001 ) addresses this kind of question by focusing on their presentation
to CS learners. The idea is to formulate a problem in a way that would not give any
hint of whether the problem is solvable or not, or of the conditions under which it
is solvable. Such a formulation has two main merits. First, learners get the idea that
there are unsolvable problems, and second, learners acquire skills for determining
whether a problem is solvable or not, and if a problem is solvable under certain con-
ditions, to find out these conditions. This idea is illustrated in Hazzan ( 2001 ) with
respect to different problems, for example, the halting problem, the tiling problem,
and map coloring problem.

9.5 Assimilation of the Types of Questions to Different

Computer Science Contents

As we stated in the beginning of the chapter, the presented types of questions are
mainly programming-related questions. Still, most of them can be used in a variety
of CS contexts. Table 9.4 presents specific variations of several question types in
the context of Automata theory.