USING CRITIQUE TECHNIQUES TO IMPROVE PROGRAMMING SKILL

Certain teaching methods may be effective in dissemination of subject knowledge across students but at the same time, the same method may not be that useful when applied to other subjects. For creative subjects like visual arts, the use of a standard academic checklist to ascertain knowledge acquisition may not prove to be effective in tracking students’ artistic developments. In such a case, a preferred teaching strategy would be the use of unbiased feedback and comments to review, discuss and reflect on how much the students have made meaningful connections of their own learning. Conducting critique sessions may accentuate success in attaining set learning outcomes. This technique was piloted and used in a First-Year programming module “Fundamentals of Programming” at Singapore Polytechnic. This was to provide students with an integrated learning experience that allows acquisition of the necessary competence in understanding and applying programming knowledge and concurrently developing personal and professional skills such as communication, giving / receiving feedback and computational thinking. A key outcome is that students will learn the importance of writing well-constructed efficient programming codes with ideas generated from alternative approaches. This is an essential disciplinary skill of an IT professional in the rapidly expanding technology industry. This paper also shares how adjustments are introduced in student engagement and the learning environment in response to the Covid-19 pandemic.