I haven't been posting about specific CS teaching techniques and lesson content recently. Probably because I've been teaching the same classes at Hunter now for the past six years.

Twice a year, Fall and Spring, I teach a recitation for Hunter's CS1 in C++. In the Fall I also teach a version of their CS0 in Python. My second undergrad CS class in the Spring is Data Structures.

I have some freedom in the CS0 class but that's more with applications and assignments since the basics are the basics. Data Structures is even more constrained. I've got to cover the same data structures and algorithms as the other, non honors section. I can do more and I can cover things the way I want but the list of data structures and algorithms is pretty set.

For my CS1 recitation, I probably have the most freedom. For the regular sections, they cover a number of labs in the recitation. Since I have an honors class, I push the labs to homework assignments and can do what I want with the recitation time. This gives me some freedom but I still have to match the pace and content with what they're learning in the CS1 lectures. That means I can't arbitrarily cover a topic until it's prerequisites are covered in the main lecture and likewise, I can't cover anything that's covered in a future lecture.

Now, this doesn't mean I have no freedom at all. For all three courses, I developed my lessons and I've continually tweaked how I've taught but it's been largely the same.

I bet this is similar to a math teacher teaching algebra or geometry for the billionth time.

For the CS1 lab I initially added in a bunch of software engineering and a couple of straight CS topics. The software engineering included things like coding standards, testing, code reviews, working on other peoples code and the like. It's worked well but last couple of times I've felt the course was a little stagnant and wanted to mix in some new things.

What to add? I looked at the class calendar and lecture syllabus and as luck will have it, I'll be able to add three more topics this semester. First up will be code coverage. We've been talking about testing and TDD since I started teaching at Hunter but code coverage as it relates to tests has been an afterthought. This time, I'm going to bring it to the forefront. I think it'll be interesting and fun. The second will be Continuous Integration (CI). I was holding off on this because of tooling but now that I've had a chance to look, it seems that GitHub actions will make it really easy. Finally, I want to more formally talk about code profiling.

None of these topics is particularly large or complex (at least at the introductory level) so it'll all fit nicely and it's giving me something new to get excited about as opposed to the same lessons merely tweaked. In fact, I'm finding myself thinking "Oh man, I'm going to have to cover those three lessons on decryption before I get to that cool new lesson on code coverage, ugh." Four years ago, the decryption lesson was the cool and fun new lesson that I was super excited about.

So, we'll see how it all goes. Planning to report back after all the lessons are delivered.