How can I be an effective programming leader?

[eedoga]

Ok...I am the lead mentor for team 2980. I have a couple of tools that I use to help my team with programming:

1) Write the parts of the program yourself, and have them (the students go through line by line and annotate each line of code explaining why it is there and what it does. They are not allowed to use code you have written until they show that they understand what it is for and does.) This way you have working code, and you are giving someone else the opportunity to learn from you.)

2) (This is really the backseat method described above) Keep your hands in your pockets to keep yourself from "doing" anything, and tell them...step by step...what to do and why they are doing it. (This is a lot more time consuming than doing it yourself, but it works. Make sure they take notes and input annotations(comments) so that they can look back over the code and know what you were trying to do.)

3) Create and sustain a code bank...Little bits of code that can be copied and pasted, and then modified with notes on what each bit does and how to use it.

4) Have your students write out pseudo code (really have them write comments) then go back and work with them to fill in the actual code.

Hope this helps. By using these techniques we have gone from 1 person able to program in Lab View to 4, and the entire team can at least read a lab view program and tell you a bit about what it should do.

Edoga