Our Design Guidelines for Teaching Programming Talkthroughs

Sophia Westwood:

As we slowly ramp up content creation for Khan Academy Computer Science, I put together this list of design guidelines as a reference point for teaching our programming talkthroughs. We’d like to use them as a starting point to spark a conversation with the teaching community.
It’s our first iteration, and we’re under no illusion that we’ve figured it all out. We know that teaching is complicated and difficult, and we’re still trying to live up to our own guidelines given the time and tool limitations. While we have to strike a balance between covering material, developing strong content, and enhancing the platform, we always like to discuss what we could do better.
So, we would love to hear reactions to these design guidelines based your experiences teaching kids programming. How can we better fulfill these guidelines? How can we support more effective learning within the talkthrough format? What are the tips and tricks you’ve picked up from your teaching or research? Please write a comment, or get in touch with us at compsci-feedback@khanacademy.org.