4. PREP VS. PHASE 0
Interview
(Admissions)
Admitted (time
between interview
and Phase 0)
• Prep Competencies
Phase 0 (9 weeks)
• Unit 1
• Unit 2
• Unit 2
Prep
5. PROBLEMS BEFORE…
Prep was designed to give students:
Things to study before entering Phase 0 (to deal with the long wait times we
had in SF and CHI)
A taste of the DBC experience
A stronger foundation in:
Programming concepts
Syntax
Research
DBC culture
Chances to pair and learn with one another
We also wanted to better assess students. Some found the old
assessment a flawed indicator of student preparedness
6. PHASE 0 PREREQUISITES
Students are expected to come into Phase 0 with basic knowledge
of:
Their learning and thinking styles (VARK and Gregorc)
How to set up their computer
The command line (pwd, mkdir, cd, ls, touch, cp, mv, rm, etc.)
Ruby (Learn to Program and Codecademy)
Typing (be able to type at least 40wpm)
We designed the prep competencies with the assumption that
students would have one week to go through the curriculum before
starting phase 0.
This has been a problem for recent Chicago and NYC cohorts
Students in SF continue to request additional work
See the competencies
7. CURRICULUM OVERVIEW
Unit expectations
Students need to pair with their peers at least 4 times in Unit 1 and 6 times in
Unit 2 and submit feedback for their pair
Attend required Guided Pairing Sessions and submit feedback for their pair
Rate at least 20 pieces of feedback
Weekly
Students have between 5 - 8 technical coding challenges
2 blog assignments per week (one technical and one cultural)
Also see the Phase 0 Student Handbook
8. CURRICULUM OUTLINE
The 12 week Phase 0 curriculum was a good start, but lacked in three
categories we addressed in the 9 week program:
Culture
Weekly cultural blog assignments:
Kitchen vs. restaurant, fears about DBC, thinking/learning styles, issues in tech, feedback,
stereotype threat, conflict
Community
Cohorts for all locations are in the same community, which helps students
communicate, get answers to their questions, and answer others’ questions
Technical blog assignments relating to a topic of the week students are asked to
share with their cohort
Comprehension
Students required to reflect on their learning for each challenge more explicitly
Technical blogs reinforce concepts they’ve learned or researched during the week
9. CURRICULUM OUTLINE
Unit 1
Week 1: HTML/CSS
Web basics: git, GitHub, open source, licenses (very very basic)
Basic HTML (doctype, head, title, body, headings, paragraphs, lists, links)
Basic CSS (classes, Ids, basic positioning, and box model)
Week 2: More HTML/CSS
Wireframing, Chrome Devtools, the DOM
Responsive Design
More CSS (fonts, pseudo elements, HTML5 elements)
Week 3: JavaScript
git (from the command line)
Create, add properties to, delete properties from, and access values from JavaScript
Object literals
Basic functions
Intro to testing and TDD (with pre-written tests)
10. CURRICULUM OUTLINE
Unit 2
Week 4: Ruby Algorithms
Coding Process: Basic Testing, Pseudocode, Initial Solution, Refactoring, and Reflection
Flow Control, Loops, and Built-in Ruby methods
Use strings, integers, arrays and hashes
Destructive vs. non-destructive methods
Week 5: Introduction to Classes
Basic Classes
Introduction to SCOPE
Week 6: Object-Oriented Design
Assert Statements
Composition
Single Responsibility
Nested Arrays
User Stories
11. CURRICULUM OUTLINE
Unit 3
Week 7: SQL
Adhere to naming conventions for tables and columns
Create a graphical representation of a simple database
Database relationships (one to one, one to many, many to many, one to one)
Write simple SELECT statements using (SELECT, FROM, WHERE, LIMIT, and
ORDER BY)
Week 8 and 9: Review
The curriculum is divided into categories
Students select a set amount of challenges each week in the following categories:
HTML/CSS (1/week)
JavaScript (2/week)
Ruby (2/week)
SQL (1/week)
12. GUIDES
We moved to using contracted DBC graduates, called “guides” to
lead Guided Pairing Sessions.
Student Feedback: students wanted more session times outside of normal
business hours
Recent graduates have a pretty good hold on what DBC is like and are in a
good place to talk to students who want to know more about the DBC
experience
It helps our recent graduates brush up on the basics while giving them the
time to continue their learning
It is much more difficult to cover all hours with full-time staff who will need to
take vacations, etc.
As a result, we’ve been working on improving the training for
guides to create a more consistent student experience.
13. ASSESSMENT
We removed the formal test-style assessment and instead assess
students through the following:
Guided Pairing Sessions (GPS)
Students attend 4 GPS in Phase 0 (in the curriculum)
Students work with a pair on a special challenge and have a guide as well
Guides assess students in terms of technical and cultural progress using the
following scale
-1 Student is very behind and we’re worried about them catching up
0 Student is behind, but will likely be able to catch up
1 Student is on track
2 Student is far ahead of the curriculum
Students receive ASK feedback from the guide after each session. They do not
receive their scores.
14. ASSESSMENT
Code Reviews
Students have built-in solo challenges each week. They are expected to work
on these by themselves and to fully understand the code they turn in.
We provide 2 code reviews on a solo challenge for each student.
Unit 1, week 3: JavaScript Solo Challenge
Unit 2, week 5: Ruby Solo Challenge
We assess students on the same scale (-1 to 2) for solo challenges
Each challenge has multiple parts (pseudocode, initial solution, refactored
solution, reflection) to help us gauge the student’s comprehension of the
concepts. They are not able to simply paste a solution in without explaining
their logic and progress.
The summary document sent to teachers at the end of phase 0
consists of an average of the 4 GPS scores and 2 Code Reviews.
15. WHAT WE HAVE DONE WELL
Students have more chances to interact with DBC
We offer 30 min tutoring sessions to help students who are struggling
We have 10 office hours per week where students can jump in and ask a
question
Students are getting feedback more consistently on their progress
Students are pairing more often – required to pair 4 times in unit
1, 6 times in units 2 and 3
Students are interacting with one another and answering others’
questions
Students have more interaction with our culture and are
introduced to IKE, feedback, and other cultural topics we believe
in – The amount of EE at DBC is not a surprise.
16. WHAT WE STILL SUCK AT
Being flexible
Assessing consistently (and more objectively)
Mediating between the needs of the guides and students
Having a diverse curriculum that has challenges with different
structures (creative, experimental, research-and-apply, group,
etc.)
Communicating with the rest of DBC
Getting other DBC instructors involved
Having more resources for students to engage with us
Wilfred Wing Fat Lau and Allan Hoi Kau Yuen, “Gender differences in learning styles: Nurturing a gender and style sensitive computer science classroom”, in Australasian Journal of Educational Technology 26 no.7 (2010): 1090-1103.
Which noted females had a higher preference for Concrete Sequential and Abstract Random compared with males, who had a higher preference for Concrete Random.
