Computer science professors earn degrees in content areas, usually not in pedagogy at the college level. So it is refreshing to see an experiment on teaching a programming language course derived from an established conceptual framework. The authors wish to move students beyond levels one (knowledge) and two (comprehension) in Bloom’s taxonomy, to levels three (application), four (analysis), five (synthesis), and six (evaluation). To achieve assimilation rather than regurgitation of concepts, the authors try to incorporate the affective domain into an upper-level programming languages course. They focus on valuing, in this case exemplified by the students’ belief in, and commitment to, the value or worth of the concepts.

The primary purpose of this study was to include affective objectives related to valuing. These affective objectives correspond to cognitive objectives. Two exercises were included in an eight-week summer session course. The first related to the use of notations such as Backus Naur form (BNF). It involved designing a language for notating telephone calls, and required choices and explanations from the students. The second exercise covered parameter passing and memory models, and included several issues for students to discuss regarding the language design choices they made. Both of these exercises were excellent for the course; students must work with and develop a really good understanding of the concepts to provide the best answers. However, if human sexuality is a 10 in creating interest, and mathematical drill is a 0, these exercises would still score more toward the drill than the sex. The student survey data, obtained using a modified intrinsic motivation inventory (IMI), confirm this intuition. The correlations between these scores and cognitive growth, as demonstrated by test scores, were not significant.

Class observers noted good student discussions and many positive results. The authors conclude that their use of affective objectives was successful, but they neglect the IMI result in their conclusion. It does seem that the class that included these exercises was a big improvement over a typical class, but not because the students valued the material more. Computer science does not have the natural appeal of some of the social sciences. However, students may be more focused on career development, and could possibly be motivated by showing how concepts are relevant to that objective, if in fact they are. One approach the authors might study to increase valuing would be to choose programming language examples and projects most relevant to career opportunities.