Dr. Mutlu Mete, Computer Science & Information Systems
Collaborative Real-Time Codies Motivates Students
Teaching programming and problem solving together requires great effort for us. At the Department of Computer Science, I teach C++ programming to help student implement their various algorithmic solutions in a computer language. Usually, introducing a new topic with coding involves in active participation of two parties in the classroom: instructor and student. Therefore, I just started using a collaborative real-time editor for my programming course, where my students and I develop sample applications together online. The idea of collaborative real-time editor is not new, but implementation barrier is just overlapped with Web 2.0 technologies.
Collaborative real-time editors can be very helpful to instructors teaching online specifically. The selling point is that many users can edit a single document at the same time. I am using http://www.ietherpad.com/ in my programming class as an extra course activity. No registration is required for participants. We just set a time first. I email the project link to students, then we chat and write a C++ program all together to analyze and solve the given problem. I am writing main part of code, and then ask my students who wants to complete the next section. I guide them through development of the new components. They are actively participating this online practicing. They are willing to write code, debug logical and syntactical errors, and ask questions. Also, they suggest different logics to complete same task. In this case, we just rewrite this specific section of the code by implementing initiator’s new idea. My students truly like this tool since it is online, real-time, collaborative, and has good features for programmers.
You may see one of our projects here. Just click the play button and watch the animated history of this sample project over time. I believe this is a wonderful feature that students can see how this program was written step-by-step. I have an account with this website (free). After each project, I make it available to my students so that they can learn even later. Programming can be boring sometimes, but this tool makes it enjoyable and shows how a whole program is developed, what are the different stages in the project over time.
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