[racket] About modes

On Aug 19, 2011, at 3:00 AM, Jukka Tuominen wrote:

> I think what is rather exceptional in student language mode thinking, is that you are trying/ being able to create a  kind of
> laboratory environment where each learning step can be controlled. Hard to say whether it is a good idea or not per se, but the problems seem to raise when you try to step off the lane. It is a unique situation to be able to do that.
>  
> If new features are introduced as you move further (gaining new skills in games :) but never go back, then it should be mostly OK, except that it may make the of-the-lane learning more challanging. I could think of two situations like that
>  - Wanting to create a new lane of learning for a special purpose or experimenting whether some other order might be more optimal
>  - Learning through colleages outside the lane ("ok, you don't have that feature available, yet... What I usually do in these situations...")

Yes, that's one of the more reasonable criticisms that has been leveled at the PBD project: the software supports one specific sequence of topics, and if an instructor wants to introduce things in a different order (e.g. mutation & I/O early), the software ALLOWS that but doesn't really help.  Even some people on this list have been known to start their courses in Advanced Student or #lang racket because there was some feature they wanted to introduce early.


Stephen Bloch
sbloch at adelphi.edu

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