Milestones

[JustinM]

For the TECS instructors out there, would you say that if a student reaches a certain point in the program, that they can generally complete the rest of the program successfully? What are the biggest stumbling blocks that students encounter?

What would you say are the major milestones in the course (or perhaps each chapter could be considered a major milestone)?

For myself, I've just reached chapter 5. I generally work on TECS every day, but only for about 30 minutes, and I don't rush at all. From what I can tell it seems like as long as I continue to enjoy the learning process and stick with it I'll get there eventually.

[ybakos]

JustinM wrote

For the TECS instructors out there, would you say that if a student reaches a certain point in the program, that they can generally complete the rest of the program successfully? What are the biggest stumbling blocks that students encounter?

This is highly dependent on the student.

I personally do not feel there is a "certain point" in the book that is a milestone for indicating the successful completion of the remaining chapters. In particular, the first few chapters are hardware-centric, while the rest of the chapters are software-centric.

In my experience, the biggest "stumbling block" is not managing one's time correctly to allow for completion of the work; not spending enough time studying the reading (or even reading at all); and a lack of proficiency with a productive programming language, which is necessary for finishing the work during the course of one semester.

[JustinM]

Thanks. It seems like a shame for students to have to get all of this done in one semester, rather than taking one's time to learn the subject matter slowly, thoroughly, and actually enjoying it. But I have always felt that way about higher learning in general.

Hopefully, I will eventually complete this. I'd like to study more advanced texts when I'm complete to get an understanding of concepts that were outside of the scope of the book, and continuously learn about computer science.

This book has made me wonder if I should have studied computer science when I was younger!

[cadet1620]

JustinM wrote

For the TECS instructors out there, would you say that if a student reaches a certain point in the program, that they can generally complete the rest of the program successfully? What are the biggest stumbling blocks that students encounter?

From doing support on the forum and via email, I see two stumbling blocks: In project 3, the transition from combinatorial logic to sequential logic can be difficult. In project 7, new programmers may not have learned about pointers yet, and have trouble with the segment and segment pointer concepts.

Most of my experience has been helping independent students.  I suspect that both of these issues are easier to deal with in a classroom environment where the students can talk about them with instructors and peers.

--Mark