Introducing a New Programming Technique: Driver and Navigator

One of the things that I learned about while at the Mobile Makers teacher training academy in Chicago was a new technique for learning about programming.  In the past when I taught a new programming concept, I would talk a little bit about it and then show the students how to apply it.  The students would then copy down my code onto their own computers to see if it works.  I often found that I might be going too fast for some of my students.

A new technique that I learned about assigns different roles for students in order to keep students more engaged and to help increase student understanding.  Rather than typing in the sample code myself into the display computer, I could assign one student to be a "driver" for the example.  While this student is "driving", all other students would need to turn away from their devices and pay attention to the app creation.  My role would then be to "navigate" this student through how to create the app.  This would cause me to verbalize my thinking more and could give students more insight into what they are doing and why.  This also would dramatically slow down my explanation.  Once the "driver" has completed a few lines of code, I would then ask the rest of the class to turn back to their devices and recreate the code we wrote together.  We would continue this pattern of watching the "driver" and then trying the code on their own.

This technique can also be applied when students are working together.  Students can work in pairs where one is the driver and the other is the navigator.  The driver is the only student who can touch the keyboard.  The navigator dictates the next steps to take.  The students switch roles often so that both are contributing to the problem-solving process and one student doesn't take over.