Why should we bore students when teaching CS?

Ahoniemi, T., Lahtinen, E. and Valaskala, K.

Motivating students is extremely important. This poster is about pursuing the use of humour, or at least real-life related examples, on assignments in CS courses. We conducted the wild experiment of disguising a boring assignment description as a humorous pirate story. The outcome was surprisingly positive. This sort of approach can have a direct and positive effect on the dropout rate of the course, so it is worth trying.

Cite as: Ahoniemi, T., Lahtinen, E. and Valaskala, K. (2007). Why should we bore students when teaching CS?. In Proc. Seventh Baltic Sea Conference on Computing Education Research (Koli Calling 2007), Koli National Park, Finland. CRPIT, 88. Lister, R. and Simon, Eds. ACS. 227-228.

(from crpit.com) (local if available)