Micheal Staton said that "Stack Overflow is the new Computer Science department, where people go to learn together"
If we replace "Computer Science" with the more practical "Computer Programming", what is your opinion on this quote?
On one side, The Stack Overflow dataset has great potential for education, being the largest dataset of solved exercises, with a relatively good content and with a strong problem-based approach.
However, Stack Overflow, as it is, has clear limitations from an educational point of view: lack of structure, content too fragmented, potential problem of reliability of the content and there is little to support a learner (indeed, there is a lot more to support a professional). Stack Overflow has been criticized often for only encouraging "cut&paste" habits and quick answers.
My question is: Can we turn Stack Overflow ( and similar CoP) into a tool for teaching Computer Programming?
Maybe yes, maybe yes as a supplemental material for quizzes or exercises, or maybe no.
I am developing a research project to investigate the potential of such online communities in a teaching&learning context.
I'll be grateful if you can help me with your opinion.
If you want to go the extra mile, I have a 5-minute survey on the topic:
If you are a lecturer use this link: http://eSurv.org/?u=COP_lecturers
If you are a student (any level): http://eSurv.org/?u=online_COP_students
An interesting question indeed. I have been working with an MSc student to use the Stack Overflow data set on design patterns to help software developers search for and learn about design patterns. I'm still trying to figure out whether the results are good enough to merit publication. At the moment, I get F-measures around 1.6%, so nowhere near what one would want...
I'd be interested to hear more about your research, though!
Steffen
Well, yes. But, assuming the students have basic knowledge of computer science. Because, stackoverflow most of the times avoids discussion on knowledge and stresses more on specific problems.
I mean, your answer is most likely to be closed if you ask 'How to bubble sort in Java or python?' But, if you face some issues of efficiency, edge cases, your answer might be accepted. You have to take not of this.
I feel, it can be advanced educational tool for students.
very interesting field of study.
In my opinion, StackOverflow needs to be improved in two areas:
a) controversial answers among users
b) a mechanism (e.x. expertise finder), that be able to identifiy the high quality answers and questions. In other words, experts need to be found (since we agree that knowledge comes from experts).
Firstly, I am not a teacher, although want to be one. I am a researcher working in NLP domain. Today I was searching QA dataset for my research, got this link, the title catched my eyes. What an idea! Can we turn Stackoverflow as a education tool. I can say yes, not as you might have thought thoguh. I mean, we can use the materials from stackoverflow to create learning content, to test students, maybe it can be used as a resource for intelligent tutoring systems/ adaptive learning systems.
- Badges
- Science topic
- Similar topics
- Computer Science