The author argues against project-based learning but then states his "5-minute attempt to come up with an alternative way to teach these skills" which are, effectively, all projects or pieces of a project. Ultimately it doesn't boil down to project-based learning being ineffective, but lack of teaching for communication in engineering teams. If a student's goal is to learn network programming, then they should speak up that they want to focus on that aspect of the project. I took a few CS course post-grad after already beginning my programming journey and found the methods of teaching to be highly ineffective (the practice problems were too abstract and most students couldn't draw the connection to real-life problems - this is at a uni with a top CS program). Upper level courses should definitely keep focus on the complexities of theory, but entry-level CS courses would serve students better by fostering their interest in a topic and showing what it's like in the work force, and then if it's still something they want to pursue then teaching the theory makes sense as it's something they would end up trying to learn about on their own anyway.
No comments yet.