Misconception: Students believe that in a primitive assignment, x = y could be the equivalent of y = x; they think that the computer science “=” sign is the same as the mathematical “=” sign.
Use a classroom debate as a way to encourage students to engage in discussions about ethics in computer science.
Provide students opportunities to analyze ethical dilemmas beyond their personal beliefs or preferences to ensure students get exposure to a wide variety of perspectives.
Alert students working with csv files about removing different types of white-space because students don’t always expect to need to remove white space.
Empathize with students who struggled to get their code working, these students may not be ready to think about how to advance the design of their program; suggesting they refactor their code immediately after it finally runs can be discouraging.
Show students many examples so they see that Java passes arguments by value to help improve student understanding of scope.
Show code where the name of the method’s actual arguments and formal parameters are different so students see first hand that these two items don’t have to match for code to execute and improve their understanding of scope.
Show students recursive code when teaching induction to help them learn to reason about solving induction problems since this topic confuses many students.
Emphasize to your students that in languages like Java a semicolon ends a complete thought, rather than just a line of code.