Gradually increase the grading strictness about styling to help students become more meticulous about naming and documentation.
Encourage new CS students to break away from the habit of using an interface to solve computer problems.
Beginning students are used to viewing computers from a user’s perspective, and they subsequently have habits that may conflict with using the computer as a programmer.
Model the software engineering process by having students design games or other projects for an audience. This helps students gain valuable, hands-on experience and make connections to real world applications.
Have students keep a “bug collection” in a journal so they can more easily recognize and eliminate bugs in the future.
As a debugging technique, have students write out their programs in their spoken language and compare their description to the code in order to find bugs.
Encourage students to use Create Your Own Block to store procedures in Scratch to help ease debugging.