My report on semester teaching at the university

What is this article about

Hello! Happy New Year! :)

Personally, I never thought that one day I would be in the role of a teacher. But we live in such a dynamic world that you cannot always say with confidence what will happen next year, next month or even tomorrow. And so, being a student of the 4th course, I could not help but meet the leadership of the department in familiarizing young first-year students with the basics of C programming.
What came out of it - read under the cut.

A bit of background

On September 1 of last year, I was a little shocked when I learned that the Computer Systems Department of Odessa National Polytechnic University was left without a few very good and experienced teachers. Someone went on an internship abroad, someone just decided to change the profession. Thus, a small “hole” was formed when one teacher had to teach an essential list of disciplines in all courses. The load is incredible, you know.
I remember exactly that the idea of ​​helping the native department arose spontaneously when AStek and I signed a summer practice. Accordingly, the idea was presented, followed by something like an interview with the head of the department. Having proved the purity of his thoughts and the ability to work on a volunteer basis, it was decided that we could well teach the first course.
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And what's next?

It took just a couple of days to complete all the formalities. It just so happened that our schedule and first-year schedule overlapped with important couples. Thus, we did not have the opportunity to conduct lectures. But it was quite possible to attend laboratory work. Since we were on “probationary period”, everything suited everyone in full. "Tuesday, the third couple" - eloquently recorded in his phone :)
So, we are on the first pair in the life in the role of “teachers”. This was the second laboratory work in the first year, and it was devoted to the syntax of the C language.

It is worth making a small digression and tell a little about the learning process.
The educational process consists of 16 lectures, 16 practices and 16 laboratory works on the basics of C programming. Accordingly, one of the above items per week. I will not say much about lectures and practices, but I will say that everything is obvious here - the basic fundamentals of the language are taught, from syntax to manipulations with strings, memory, and file I / O streams. As for laboratories, then everything is the same. A small addition was the use of "graphical" programming. First of all, it is easier at first sight to determine if the program is working correctly. Secondly, this approach somehow brightens up the routine. Thirdly, beginners have a feeling that they can really write something more or less serious with their brains. Since we worked under Ubuntu, it was suggested to use ncurses or SDL from the graphic libraries.
By the way, a lightweight version of the library was used, written three or four years ago by members of the department. The library found several errors that AStek undertook and successfully overcame everything :). The default development environment was CodeBlocks.

Let's still go back to the lab. Twenty-one people in the sexual ratio of 17: 4. Most school programming was at a very mediocre level. To be honest, I already vaguely remember my first course, but it seemed that problems should not arise. Was wrong. The very first problem was to find a common language. Personally, I don’t really like jargon, but still I say the word “debugger” more often than “debugger”. I literally from the first questions began to miss osteo-language. And not because I did not know the discipline, but because I did not know how to formulate correctly, so that everyone could understand. But the adaptation did not take much time, so everything fell into place with the second half pair.
On the same day I asked a question on Habré. Taking this opportunity, I would like to thank the people who gave invaluable advice: korvindest , vadiml , Kroz and of course png .

These 16 weeks have flown by almost unnoticed. It did not work right away, but somewhere from the middle the guys understood what was required of them. Immediately after the laboratory, as a report for the entire semester, it was necessary to provide a settlement and graphic work. Preferably using the above graphic libraries. What came out of all this is better - screenshots tell me.







As for me, very good for the first year.

What next?

The semester is over, and the guys started the session. Let's all mentally wish them good luck and balloons :)
But seriously, this semester was the most unusual in my life. I really tried my best to do the best. Not less than I tried and AStek , as well as all the other teachers, lab assistants and graduate students.
It remains to wait for the end of the session and the decision of the department management whether we are worthy to teach not only laboratory, but also lectures. And in the next semester, such disciplines as “programming in Java” , “algorithms and data structures” , and also “web design” are waiting for the first course. As you can see, everything is more than serious - after all, these disciplines will most likely be fed by about 60-70% of all graduates who have settled in their specialty. But behind the scenes it will not rise. Immediately after we formed a line.

Post Scriptum

I want to express my deep gratitude to all-all-all who helped with advice or just a kind word. Who in one way or another took part in all this event - not only graduate students, teachers and laboratory assistants, but also those about whom I am writing this article :)

Happy New Year everyone! :)