Nifty Assignments
Nick Parlante, Julie Zelenski, Dave Feinberg, Kunal Mishra, Josh Hug, Kevin Wayne, Michael Guerzhoy, J. Cheung, François Pitt
ACM SIGCSE Technical Symposium
Abstract
I suspect that students learn more from our programming assignments than from our much sweated-over lectures, with their slide transitions, clip art, and joke attempts. A great assignment is deliberate about where the student hours go, concentrating the student’s attention on material that is interesting and useful. The best assignments solve a problem that is topical and entertaining, providing motivation for the whole stack of work. Unfortunately, creating great programming assignments is both time consuming and error prone. The Nifty Assignments special session is all about promoting and sharing the ideas and ready-to-use materials of successful assignments.