This paper made me think a lot about how I learned design. Much of "how to design" was force fed to me. There was "the TA endorsed" design, and like the paper said, anything else wasn't sure to get you full credit. While showing students how to design might help them finish the program quickly, it doesn't necessarily do them justice in the long run.

This paper stressed the importance of teaching students that there is more than one way to attack a problem. I think this is a very important skill to have, knowing a bunch of different ways to do something helps to ensure that at least one of your attempts will succeed. I'm not sure how I feel about the heuristics discussed, as just showing people more patterns might not help. I feel that students need to try to design a "rough draft" of their design before anyone gives them the "endorsed version."

Students need to learn how to look at a problem and break it down. Always relying on someone to tell you what classes you'll most likely need doesn't help when you have to design something by yourself. If students were forced to submit a design of their own before getting a chance to see a TA's design ideas, they would learn how to design things for themselves. A second design check could allow for revisions when there were major problems. I feel that overall design is difficult to teach, but hand feeding students designs isn't the best method.

I agree completely. Hopefully with some of the new stuff that we're seeing and coming up with, we'll be able to quickly teach various alternatives so students will understand them, and then choose the best way on their own, and implement it well.