Learning by Doing

After graduating from the University of Hawaii, I fell into a programming funk. I didn't know what to do, how to get started, or where to get help. I felt like none of the courses I took prepared me to take a project from development through to distribution. I missed not having access to Professors, TA's, classmates, and friends. I finally took action and contacted my mentor for guidance.

His advice was to just start hacking. Do anything. Think of an idea and try to implement the program. Work by trial and error. If you encounter an error, try to figure it out with research and fix the problem. There is no better way to learn then to just do it.

I found the following on a website the echoes this sentiment.

Program. The best kind of learning is learning by doing. To put it more technically, "the maximal level of performance for individuals in a given domain is not attained automatically as a function of extended experience, but the level of performance can be increased even by highly experienced individuals as a result of deliberate efforts to improve." (p. 366) and "the most effective learning requires a well-defined task with an appropriate difficultly level for the particular individual, informative feedback, and opportunities for repetition and correction of errors." (p. 20-21) The book Cognition in Practice: Mind, Mathematics, and Culture in Everyday Life is an interesting reference for this viewpoint.

This concept of learning by doing would have been nice to have done while at UH. Looking back I feel my focus was more on completing assignments before the due date to get the best grade to pass the class to get to graduation. I didn't immerse myself into the subject to fully understand it and relate it to a real world problem. Because of this, I didn't have the right mindset or ask the right questions. I would've liked to learn by doing with the class, during class, with the professor giving feedback and correcting errors as he instructs. My ideal situation would've allowed more natural learning and less lecturing.

I've been thinking a lot about my student self. I feel I approached learning all wrong. I put more effort into getting through my courses then being in the moment and participating. I've come to realize my goals were geared towards doing what I needed to do to move up instead of understanding the material. It would've been amazing to be given a difficult task and allowed to fail without the consequence. My failure would have been an opportunity to teach me where I went wrong and how to correct the mistake for next time instead of failing me with no idea or explanation why my work was unsatisfactory and forced to retake the course.

It wasn't all bad. I had a few courses that allowed me to learn by doing. We worked on real world projects. I was able to receive informative feedback and correction on errors. In one of these classes I was introduced to pair-programming. Pair-programming is a great concept.

Over the past year of I've been learning a new programming language and hacking away implementing a variety of programs. I am gaining a deeper knowledge of Ruby on Rails, CSS, and XHTML. In this process I'm learning more about utilizing the MySQL database, how the MVC paradigm works, how to work with plugins and gems, authentication, uploading images and videos, dynamic select menus, and many more things. I am coming to the conclusion that a year of learning by doing has given me a better understanding then the majority of Computer Science courses I took at UH. Out of the 15 or more ICS courses I took during my time at UH, only two were helpful, ICS 413 and ICS 414.

I will be continuing my learning by doing. My current project is a web application using Rails. My ultimate goal is to get my webapp online. I also plan on getting back into Java development. My last foray with Java was using the Struts web application framework, eclipse, ant, tomcat, mysql, and cvs. I will be looking into what I need to develop with Java and if any of the preceding tools are still relevant.