Integrated View at the MTCS Course Organization: The Case of Recursion - Guide to Teaching Computer Science: An Activity-Based Approach - page 217

this activity, in which classification tasks are examined from a pedagogical
perspective, the students are told that this page aims at introducing the con-
cept of recursion to computer science learners who are not familiar with
this concept.
• Stage C: Build a classification page, homework, and class discussion
• Before homework is presented, it is recommended to discuss with the stu-
dents what other computer science concepts can be introduced to computer
science learners by classification tasks and what characterizes these concepts.
• As their homework assignment, the students are asked to build another
classification page for a different computer science concept. As mentioned
in Chap. 7 (Sect. 7.2.5), good candidates for such concepts are data struc-
tures, control structures, and abstraction.
• If time permits, it is recommended to dedicate an additional lesson in which
the students present their classification pages. In their presentation, they
should be encouraged to address how they chose the concept for which
the page was constructed and how they selected the instances included in
their page. These presentations should be followed by a class discussion
which emphasizes the teacher's perspective. This discussion can focus
on advantages and disadvantages of classification tasks as a pedagogical
method for introducing new concepts to computer science learners. The
instructor can explicitly direct the students to reflect on what they learned
during their work on the classification page about recursion. It is worth-
while addressing in this discussion concepts such as classification, gener-
alization, abstraction, mental construction, constructivism, active learning,
group work, alternative ways to introduce recursion (or other computer
science concepts), and visualization (see also Chap. 7).
• Stage D: Summary: read a paper, homework
• This topic can be summarized by the following homework:
• Read the paper Levy 2001 .
• Choose at least one aspect of the classification activity that was not
discussed in the class and explain its importance from a pedagogical
perspective.
• Among the research findings presented in Sect. 5 of the paper, choose one
finding that surprised you and explain why it surprised you.

12.3 Leap of Faith

Once learners are familiar with the concept of recursion, for example, by work-
ing on the classification task, programming aspects of recursion can be addressed.
This transfer, however, should be done very carefully since there is an agreement
that understanding recursion sets cognitive challenges for novice computer science
learners (George 2000 ).