In what ways might your current classroom culture encourage students to throw out incorrect work rather than revise it? How could you modify your teaching practice to build a culture that promotes seeing the value in mistakes and incomplete approaches?
In what ways do your students already engage in systematic testing or debugging in other content areas (e.g. ELA)? How could you leverage students’ experience with these processes (e.g., proofreading) to support them in learning how to test and debug programs? How could you integrate computer science terminology (e.g., debugging) into your teaching of other subjects to help students make connections?
Of the two components of debugging defined in this chapter – finding errors and fixing errors – for which do you think your students will need more scaffolding? How could you anticipate and provide the supports might they need?
Discussion Questions From Dr. Christine Liebe (CSTeach Course, Colorado School of Mines)
Have you ever worked with a program that has bugs or times out or just doesn’t work? How does it feel when a program does not work? What are your approaches to finding and fixing bugs?
What are some fun games or competitions or even classroom characters (real or imagined) that could assist students in developing testing and debugging practices?
What types of small group activities would benefit from having one student assigned as a code tester?
How could you reinforce the iterative development of programs and testing in assessments?
What types of comments might students add to their code that will help you assess their knowledge of testing and debugging?
How could a reflective journal or written program development summary assist you in identifying gaps in testing/debugging knowledge?
