The TeachScheme! Evaluation

The TeachScheme! Evaluation Page (Elsik)

Over this past year, the students of three programming classes at Elsik High School (Alief school district) took both a conventional C++ and a TeachScheme!. All three classes were taught by the same teacher. The AP class focused on C++ for most of the year and added some Scheme for the last few weeks. The other two first studied Scheme and later switched to C++ in preparation for the AP class next year.

The following three sections explain how the two students reacted to the TeachScheme! curriculum versus the conventional C++ course and how the students in both groups perceive the relationship between mathematical and computational problem solving.

Here are the results for the C++ class in a nutshell. Overall students prefered what little they saw of Scheme over C++: 33 responses: 22 overwhelming positive for Scheme, 9 overwhelming positive for C++, 2 mostly neutral responses
A bit of analysis reveals the following:

5 out of the 9 negative are responses by male AP students whose comments suggest that they believe that AP and programming is all about knowing C++
11 females out of 14 females prefer Scheme over C++ programming

The raw data:

the survey: Elsik C++ Students
raw results of period 1
raw results of period 2

Two submissions were eliminated from the analysis. One appeared to be a duplicate entry; the second was from a student who had ignored the Scheme part of the course.

Here are the results for the Scheme class in a nutshell. Overall students split down the middle concerning Scheme vs C++: 8 out of 16 preferred Scheme; the remaining 8 preferred C++. An analysis reveals the following:

many of the students with C++ preferences
(1) seemed to know C++ and
(2) anticipated that C++ would be the primary programming language of the course
5 out of 6 female students prefer Scheme over C++ programming
None of the female students seem to have knowledge of C++.

The raw data:

the survey: Elsik Scheme Students
raw results of period 1

One submission was eliminated due to apparent duplication.

Mathematical vs computational problem solving

The TeachScheme! Project believes that the primary purpose of a computer science course at a secondary school is to strengthen the students' problem solving skills. We asked each group how their programming experience influences their mathematical problem solving skills and vice versa. The questions differed for the two groups.

Here are the results for the C++ group:

19 students think mathematical problem solving positively affects Scheme problem solving
21 students think Scheme problem solving positively affects mathematical problem solving
4 students think mathematical problem solving positively affects C++ problem solving
5 students think C++ problem solving positively affects mathematical problem solving

The rest (~10) believe the relation is equally positive for both.

The results for the Scheme group are slightly different:

12 students think mathematical problem solving positively affects Scheme problem solving
14 students think Scheme problem solving positively affects mathematical problem solving

The rest (~3) do not think so. Due to a difference in the question and answer statement, they did not have the option of choosing C++.

The results suggest that students generally prefer the TeachScheme! curriculum over the C++ curriculum, with an strong preference for the TeachScheme! curriculum among female students. Even more significant, the more the students had studied C++ in a formal setting, the more they preferred Scheme for its simplicity.

An overwhelming portion of the students also believe that there is an intimate and positive connection between Scheme-based problem solving and mathematical problem solving, far more so than for C++ programming.