TITLE: An Advantage To Needing to Ask For Help
AUTHOR: Eugene Wallingford
DATE: September 16, 2012  9:17 AM
DESC: 
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BODY:
A week or so ago
<A HREF="http://twitter.com/wallingf/status/243754415255846912">
   I tweeted</A>
about a student who came by the office for some help with a
programming assignment.  When told that he'd be hearing this
explanation again in class later in the day, he said, that's
okay, "that way I get to learn it better".

This episode came to mind again when I wrote this paragraph
in my entry yesterday about
<A HREF="http://www.cs.uni.edu/~wallingf/blog/archives/monthly/2012-09.html#e2012-09-15T10_04_22.htm">
   learning to talk about their programs</A>,
the ideas they embody, and the reasons they wrote the code
they did:

<BLOCKQUOTE><EM>
To learn learn such skills, students need practice.  The
professor needs to ask open-ended questions in class and
out.  Asking good questions outside of class is especially
important because it's in the hallway, the lab, and office
hours where students find themselves one on one with the
professor and have to answer the questions themselves.
They can't fall back on the relative anonymity of even a
small class to avoid the hard work of forming a thought
and trying to say it out loud.
</EM></BLOCKQUOTE>

This is another good reason for students to go to office
hours and otherwise to engage with the professor outside
of class:  Not only do they get answers to the questions.
they also get more and better practice talking about
problems and solutions than students who don't.

This offers an unexpected advantage to the student who
doesn't quite "get it" yet over the student who just barely
gets it:  The former might well come in to get help.  The
latter probably won't.  The former gets more interaction
and more individualized practice.  The latter gets neither.

A lot of professors encourage all students to talk to them
about their programs.  Obviously, students doing poorly
obviously can benefit from help.  Students at the top of
the curve are ones who often can benefit from going beyond
what they see in class, going farther or deeper.  But
perhaps we should work even harder to encourage an unlikely
group of students to come see us: the ones who are doing
just well enough.  They don't stand out in any way that
makes the prof seek them out, and that may place them at
risk of losing ground to other students.

That's a tough sell, though.  It's human nature not to seek
help when we don't think we need it.  If we seem to understand
the material and are doing okay on the assignments, do we
really need help?  There are also pragmatic issues like time
management.  Student who are doing okay in my course are
likely to focus their efforts on other courses, where they
feel like they need more work and help.

So, it becomes even more important for the professor to
engage all of the students in a course, both as a group and
as individuals, in reflective thinking, speaking, and writing.
Otherwise, some students who need practice with these skills
might not seek it out on their own.

Most of us know that there was an advantage to being willing
to ask questions.  Rarely do we think about how there might
be an advantage to <EM>needing</EM> to ask questions.
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