Learning-by-doing is one of the best ways of getting used to the material that you are learning. I actually prefer to learn things by working through problems in this class. The more problems I do, the more comfortable I feel with doing the material. However, there are some caveats such as learning jargon and conceptual ideas. It is true that doing problems can make some concepts easier to understand, but there are others where they are not covered thoroughly.
I took EE 369 this semester, which is a hybrid asynchronous class where you learn object oriented programming with C# within the context of Computational Media Systems, with a focus on video game development in Unity. I learned how to design and create games that involved software classes that include constructors, accessors, and mutators to maintain object state. The assigned homework throughout the semester were to follow the book instructions and create simple games that covered fundamental concepts of video game design in Unity. The final exam had a multiple choice section and a written section. The written section stressed conceptual ideas, so it was fairly easy for me to do since the homework we did covered a lot of conceptual ideas. However, during the multiple choice section, there were so many technical questions that I was not prepared for. Personally, I prefer to solve things conceptually rather than by technical means.
Here, I learned that the ‘Athletic’ approach to learning needs to supplemented with other methods of learning. Solving problems in the athletic approach will give you a natural feeling to understanding the content, but for me, there needs to a be a supplement to cover technical skills and ideas since I usually lack in that regard.
This class was the only way for me to understand project management for developing any kind of web project. Project management is a dynamic approach to developing software, where designing and implementation is done at the same time. The development begins with having basic features, then stacking more features in parallel to it. This allows the developer to adjust to the constantly changing project.
Learning a new programming language was fairly easy, since I had some experience in coding in C and C++ from previous classes that I have taken. Learning the foundations of one language such as the looping, if logic, scopes and encapsulation are found in a lot of languages. This logic can also be applied to frameworks, such as Semantic-UI.
When I had to learn JavaScript, I learned it through a website called FreeCodeCamp. I was able to go through the coding course with some ease, because this language had similar functionality to C++. However, when we learned HTML and Semantic-UI within a very short time, it was hard for me to do work since I had no experience with either of them from previous classes.