Creative Synthesis

One of my biggest concerns in bringing on new students is their ability to solve problems. I’m much less concerned about teaching actual skills. That’s actually not that hard to do. You read a book, try a tutorial, write some practice code or do some sketches. Most people are actually not so bad at learning these kinds of things (although they may not want to - a different sort of problem). The best part about working with college students is that the reason they aren’t so bad at learning things is because they know how to learn. Some people like reading books, other people like finding code and piecing it together until it works. At this point a student has a pretty good sense of what works for them. One thing that seems to be much harder to teach is what to do when that learning strategy fails.

The Google Test
When I’m interviewing prospective students probably the most important question is this last one. What do you do if you can’t figure something out or something doesn’t work? Students will sometime say they will use debuggers, ask friends, etc. The answer I’m really looking for is “well I’d do a quick search in Google.” Students who get this are the ones I really want working on web research. All too often in the past a student would come in and ask me a question that I didn’t know off the top of me head. My first response is to (as they are talking) type the question into Google and then proceed to answer the question. The fact that in almost every case Google knows the answer suggests that either these students didn’t think to use this resource or they aren’t that great at formulating searches. Either way, it’s bad business when you are doing research. Research is about asking good questions and knowing how to try and find answers.

Now Google can’t answer everything. If Google could answer everything we’re doing then what we’re doing probably isn’t that novel. I enjoy showing students more obscure resources, or working through problem solving strategies for a particular issue. The problem I have is when Google tells me that thousands of other people programming php have the exact same problem, with a very well formulated answer (and often code!). Even here a good student shouldn’t stop with the Google answer. The Google answer is the building block. There is plenty of room for followup dialogue. I found out *how* to do this doesn’t tell me that I should do it that way (it may be a bad solution, or just one that conflicts with some design parameters or technical goals). A good student uses the how as a start for a real conversation about should.

Hopefully I’ll find some of these kinds of students for this summer.