Abstract
Many architecture schools have started to teach computer programming as part of their design education. Their main pedagogies follow a conventional computer science approach, which has a high failure rate and is less effective for novice learners. This paper describes a novel approach to developing a curriculum, "Programming Sketches", to teach computer programming to architecture students in the context of design education. A bricolage-based approach with an atelier learning environment was explored. Instead of focusing on learning the knowledge of computer programming language, students were prompted to develop their own ways of transforming design thinking into a programming structure with an incrementally repeating manner. The reconfiguring and externalizing process of students' varying design work and the iterative development of programming structures made students' learning progress transparent. Incremental iteration is at the centre of this successful progress. The daily exercises decompose debugging and make the error-finding process quick and easy. These processes reduce the burden on instructors by permitting easy detection and correction of students' errors. This study describes a successful learning experience of novice students of computer programming and discusses how to apply pedagogical variations for cognitively varying learners.
Keywords
Bricolage, Computer programming, Design education
DOI
https://doi.org/10.21606/learnxdesign.2013.107
Citation
Park, J.(2013) Programming Sketches: a bricolage approach to teaching computer programming in design education, in Reitan, J.B., Lloyd, P., Bohemia, E., Nielsen, L.M., Digranes, I., & Lutnæs, E. (eds.), DRS // Cumulus: Design Learning for Tomorrow, 14-17 May, Oslo, Norway. https://doi.org/10.21606/learnxdesign.2013.107
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License
Included in
Programming Sketches: a bricolage approach to teaching computer programming in design education
Many architecture schools have started to teach computer programming as part of their design education. Their main pedagogies follow a conventional computer science approach, which has a high failure rate and is less effective for novice learners. This paper describes a novel approach to developing a curriculum, "Programming Sketches", to teach computer programming to architecture students in the context of design education. A bricolage-based approach with an atelier learning environment was explored. Instead of focusing on learning the knowledge of computer programming language, students were prompted to develop their own ways of transforming design thinking into a programming structure with an incrementally repeating manner. The reconfiguring and externalizing process of students' varying design work and the iterative development of programming structures made students' learning progress transparent. Incremental iteration is at the centre of this successful progress. The daily exercises decompose debugging and make the error-finding process quick and easy. These processes reduce the burden on instructors by permitting easy detection and correction of students' errors. This study describes a successful learning experience of novice students of computer programming and discusses how to apply pedagogical variations for cognitively varying learners.