Mary Rose Cook

For the last three months, I’ve been working at Makers Academy as a programming coach.

I spend part of my time working with students who have asked me for help. My goal is for the student to learn to learn. To improve my ability to help with this, I wrote down a process that I follow. The process has changed as I’ve learnt more. Here’s the latest version:

Process

1. Map the student’s request for help to one of the underlying problems:
   • No clear problem explanation
   • Want a concrete piece of information
   • Not clear on how to implement a piece of functionality
   • Not clear about how to implement a piece of functionality, and neither am I
   • Want my opinion of their idea
   • Want an intro to a topic
   • A bug they should be able to solve on their own
   • A bug they don’t have the background knowledge to fix on their own
   • A bug for which I can’t predict the likely cause
   • A bug that will take them a long time to fix
2. Apply one of the suggested solutions:
   • Suggest the escalation process
   • Help the student clarify their explanation of their problem
   • Suggest they Google it
   • Suggest the debugging process
   • Suggest reading material
   • Identify and train a developer skill
   • Identify and train a developer behaviour
   • Solve their problem
3. Ask the student for feedback on my help.

Problems underlying a request for help

The student doesn’t have a clear problem explanation

• Maybe suggest they follow the escalation process.

• Help the student clarify their explanation of their problem.

The student wants a concrete piece of information

• Maybe suggest they follow the escalation process.

• Maybe suggest they Google their question.

The student doesn’t know how to implement a piece of functionality

• Maybe suggest they follow the escalation process.

• Maybe identify and train a developer skill that will help them implement the functionality.

• Maybe suggest reading material on a topic that will solve their problem.

The student doesn’t know how to implement a piece of functionality, and neither do I

• Maybe suggest they follow the escalation process.

• Identify and train a developer skill.

The student wants my opinion on their idea

• Maybe suggest they follow the escalation process.

• Maybe identify and train a developer skill like fast prototyping or diagramming.

• Maybe identify and train a developer behaviour like reflection.

The student wants an intro to a topic

• Maybe suggest they follow the escalation process.

• Maybe suggest reading material.

The student has a bug they should be able to solve on their own

• Maybe suggest they follow the debugging process.

The student has a bug they don’t have the background knowledge to fix on their own

• Maybe suggest they follow the escalation process.

• Suggest reading material that will provide the background knowledge.

The student has a bug for which I can’t predict the likely cause

• Run through a partly closed debugging process with the student.

The student has a bug that will take them a long time to fix

• Solve the student’s problem. Make the process as open as possible.

Solutions

Suggest the escalation process

• Make the student feel held first. Then suggest the escalation process. (This link isn’t publicly accessible, I’m afraid. It points to an internal Makers Academy document. The document describes a process that helps the student help themselves. It suggests: gathering words to describe the problem, Googling, talking to a pair programming partner, and asking on the student Slack channel.)

Help the student clarify their explanation of their problem

• Maybe ask them questions to clarify their request for help.

• Maybe use 5 whys.

Suggest they Google it

• Make the student feel held first. Then suggest they Google their problem.

Suggest the debugging process

1. Tighten the loop. This means following the flow of execution to find the line of code that’s causing the bug.

2. Get visibility (aka p everywhere). This means using stdout or a debugger to see the current state of the program.

Suggest reading material

• Suggest a blog post. Or suggest a pill [an internal document that gives a condensed introduction to a topic].

Identify and train a developer skill

For example: diagramming, delegating behaviour, breaking classes into single responsibilities, debugging asynchronous code, 5 whys, falsifying assumptions, following the flow.

• I can identify a skill that’s lacking by looking at how the student makes their request, how they’ve tried to find the problem and what solutions they’ve tried.

• To set the student’s expectations, name the skill I’m going to help them train. Suggest they employ the skill to solve the problem. Name the skill at the end of the session to help them remember to use it.

• Figure out how open the process should be. Maybe the first time that I suggest diagramming, I’ll need to walk the student through it. But, in the future, I should be able to give less detailed support.

Identify and train a developer behaviour

• For example, one of the XP values.

Solve their problem

• If the student has a really tricky problem that will delay them for a long time, it’s often better to just solve it for them so they can get going again. Whilst keeping the process efficient, try and make it as open as possible. Try and explain how I know to try the things I’m trying.

Definitions

Feeling held

• Reassure the student that I’ve heard and understood their request. Reassure the student that I care about them and their request. This may involve explaining why I’m not giving them the answer.

Open process (vs closed)

• An open process is one that helps the student to learn more than a closed process. For example, letting the student type, rather than typing myself, or saying “can you use the filter function for that?” rather than “type dot f i l t e r …”.