Earning graduate credit for Carleton STI CS A

1 Administrative Details

To earn graduate credit, Carleton has specified that you must participate full-time in the institute (30 hours), and also complete a final project requiring at least 28 hours of additional work. I'd like this work to be of most use for you in expanding your own knowledge, and in preparing your course, so you've got a variety of options. You don't have to do a single one of these for 28 hours; you can do smaller chunks of each if you wish. The critical piece that I will need is a log from you indicating how you spent your time. Therefore, as you work, fill out this log form. Make sure to sign it at the bottom, and the total number of hours must be 28 or more. Send me a scan or a photograph of the form.

What follows is a list of possible sorts of projects you can do, or mix and match, in order to earn credit.

I must receive your submissions by email by July 15.

2 Write code

There's likely no better way to get better at programming then to do it. Choose some projects you'd like to work on. It could be some of the exercises that I've got on my web page, it could be a game you'd like to implement, or it could be an entirely different sort of program. The work that you're doing must be somewhat relevant to your goal of teaching AP CS A. We can be reasonably broad about this, but (for example) building a website in HTML and Javascript would seem to have little connection. I'm happy to discuss with you your ideas if you want to get a sense of whether what you have in mind is reasonable.

You should submit the code that you've written, with a clear link to a prompt or explanation of what you've tried to do so that I know how to assess it.

2.1 How I will grade it:

  • Grade A: the project works and shows time and effort spent on object-oriented design or appropriate algorithmic coding
  • Grade B: the project works, but falls short of hitting the intended goals
  • Grade C: the project works, but falls considerably short of hitting the intended goals
  • Grade D: something was submitted that showed an attempt, but it didn't work or was fairly trivial
  • Grade F: nothing was submitted

3 Develop curricula

We will spend some time together this week developing curricula associated with the 10 units present in the curriculum. You can go forward with this and develop more description and details of how you will run your class. For this activity, pick another unit that you haven't personally worked on already in the workshop, or the same unit you did if you prefer to develop a different approach than your group did. Your goal is to produce a complete plan of what you might/would do when covering this unit. Consider such issues as how long it will take, what readings or external resources you might use, what projects students will do, how you will use class/lab time, etc.

3.1 How I will grade it:

  • Grade A: sufficient detail has been provided such that it is clear precisely what activities will be done by the instructor and the student, and how that achieves the goals laid out in the College Board Course and Exam Description.
  • Grade B: reasonable detail is present, but portions of it are vague or leave significant open questions.
  • Grade C: the curriculum provided hits the right ideas and indicates roughly what will be covered, but is generally too vague to get much of a sense of how things will proceed
  • Grade D: something was submitted that showed an attempt, but it missed the mark in a major way or was fairly trivial
  • Grade F: nothing was submitted

4 Work through AP CS labs

There are now a total of seven labs that the College Board has provided. If you're interested in working on them, you can do so. This would involve reading through the teacher and student manuals, implementing your own solutions to the problems, and answering other questions they ask. Solutions are provided, but you should take your best attempt at solving them without using the solutions. Certainly, it doesn't make sense to grant credit for this if you simply turn in the solutions that have already been provided. If you are planning to submit solutions of your own, I'll grade them with the same criteria as for the "Write code" section above. Alternatively, perhaps more of your time might go into an analysis of the labs and how you would use them in your classroom. In that case, it should then be part of a "Develop curricula" activity as described above, and I'll assess it accordingly.

5 Something else

If you've got another idea that would further your ability to succeed in teaching AP CS A, talk to me about it while you're here. If you can talk me into it, I'll allow it.