Active Learning in Small to Large Courses
Contents
1. 14 15 16 17 18 0 7803 7444 4 02 17 00 2002 IEEE 19 20 21 22 Session XXX Edward F Gehringer and Tony M Louca A web based object tech nology course database 2000 OOPSLA Conference Proceedings 2001 http www xpuniverse com J D Chase and Edward G Okie Combining cooperative learning and peer instruction in introductory computer science Thirty First SIGCSE Technical Symposium on Computer Science Education pp 372 376 2000 Susan H Rodger An interactive lecture approach to teaching computer science Twenty Sixth SIGCSE Technical Symposium on Computer Sci ence Education pp 278 282 1995 Owen L Astrachan Concrete teaching Hooks and props as instructional technology Proceedings of the Third Annual Conference On Integrating Technology Into Computer Science Education pp 21 24 1998 November 6 9 2002 Boston MA 32nd ASEE IEEE Frontiers in Education Conference XXX 52. size 3 to 5 students in larger courses Students receive a seating chart with their name and their assigned seat and are expected to sit there Groups are changed about once a month or about 4 6 times during the semester There are several advantages for instructors to assign students seating For large courses having assigned seats makes it possi ble to hand out homework during class The homework is sorted by seating and can be passed out quickly This task would take a very long time in a course of 200 students if each student s name was called out and they had to walk up to the front to pick up their work Having assigned seats also makes it easier for the instructor to get to know the students because they sit in the same place and he she can look up their name Assigned seating and groups and changing them often has benefits to students as well Students will get to know more peo ple in the course as they are forced to meet people they might not otherwise meet Students are more likely to volunteer to answer a question if they feel they are part of a group and the group has had a chance to discuss the answer The student is comfortable because the group agreed on the answer Some groups have be come very competitive such as bringing in their group number on a fancy sign and holding it up high whenever they answered 0 7803 7444 4 02 17 00 2002 IEEE Session XXX a question SUPPORTING ACTIVE LEARNING There are several impe
3. A Smith Cooperative learn ing Increasing College Faculty Instructional Productivity Volum 20 Number 4 ED347871 ASHE ERIC Higher Education 1991 2 Robert E Slavin Cooperative Learning Theory Research and Practice Allyn and Bacon second edition 1995 3 Charles C Bonwell and James A Eison Active Learning Creating Ex citement in the Classroom ED336049 ASHE ERIC Higher Education Reports 1991 http ericae net db edo ED34027 htm 4 J G Penner Why Many College Teachers Cannot Lecture Charles C Thomas 1984 5 Tom Drummond A brief summary of the best practices in college teach ing http nsccux sccd ctc edu eceprog bstprac html 1995 6 Deborah Knox Ursula Wolz Daniel Joyce Elliot Koffman and Joan Krone Use of laboratories in computer science education Guidelines for good practice Report of the working group on computing laboratories Proceedings of the Conference On Integrating Technology Into Computer Science Education pp 167 181 1996 7 Alan Fekete and Antony Greening Designing closed laboratories for a computer science course Twenty Seventh SIGCSE Technical Symposium on Computer Science Education pp 295 299 1996 8 ACM Curriculum Committee on Computer Science Curriculum 78 Recommendations for the undergraduate program in computer science Communications of the ACM vol 22 no 3 pp 147 166 1979 9 Eric Mazur Peer Instruction A User s Manual Prent
4. computer Since the students must turn 90 or 180 degrees to face the front for a discussion the instructor can easily tell if anyone is not paying attention Several computer science courses have been taught in an ICC CompSci 4 and CompSci 49S and sections of CompSci 6 and CompSci 100 Other disciplines also teach in the large ICC including mathematics statistics biology sociology religion economics film and video cultural anthropology and French The writing program for first year students is the department primarily using one of the small ICCs ACTIVE LEARNING TECHNIQUES IN CLASS Two styles of using standard lecture time designed to achieve more student involvement are presented active lectures giving students a chance to check their understanding during the lec ture by working on short exercises whereas workshops allow students to work in a supervised safe lab setting where the in structor lectures only briefly However the styles presented be low can be used in traditional or ICCs Active Lectures The term active lecture in this paper refers to a simple use of active learning similar to the lecture style used by most univer sity educators modified to include other recent attempts to bring active learning to science classes 9 10 11 0 7803 7444 4 02 17 00 2002 IEEE Session XXX An active lecture begins with a story that relates the day s topics to a real world industrial experience that will be famili
5. to offer multiple sections of the same course that have different lecture times but share all other out of class work Some smaller courses with enrollments less than 40 and a few sections of CompSci 6 are taught in our Interactive Computer Classrooms ICCs with computers for stu dents to use during class Many of our courses with size 50 or more either have the small lab once a week or smaller recitation sections once a week All computer science courses at Duke University are taught by faculty Graduate teaching assistants TAs usually lead the recitations and undergraduate teaching as sistants UTAs lead the labs Structure of our Classrooms Three different types of facilities are used for Computer Sci ence courses An auditorium is the largest size room with maxi mum seating from 100 to 300 seats The design of an auditorium is usually many long rows of fixed seats that are progressively more elevated from the front to the rear A regular classroom has maximum seating size of 20 to 80 seats and usually has a grid of fixed or movable seats that are not elevated These classrooms may have long tables or desks on which the students can work Our third type of room an ICC is a room with many comput ers designed for students to use the computer during class All classrooms have Internet connections and one computer in each classroom can be projected on a large screen There are three ICCs at Duke University one large and two small
6. workshop period consists of a sequence of modules Each module contains a mini lecture 5 15 minutes followed by an exercise to be performed by the students in groups followed by a wrap up discussing the different approaches students explored The format also allows for just in time teaching 10 where the lecture is changed to address concerns that arise as a result of each workshop experience November 6 9 2002 Boston MA 32nd ASEE IEEE Frontiers in Education Conference XXX 2 While students are working in class it is important to give them as much quality feedback as possible The most effec tive way we have found to do this is to move throughout the classroom visiting with each group or even just observing their discussions However as the class size increases it becomes less practical for one person to reach every group To alleviate this problem UTAs are used during class to help visit groups and answer questions Many UTAs are not prepared to support students well in these situations 15 so UTAs attend weekly meetings to discuss teaching techniques and to outline impor tant issues to be covered in future classes Additionally UTAs provide exercises and bring up issues that are meaningful from their experience taking the class previously For example for CompSci 6 in the ICC we use the work shop format with one module per meeting Class begins with a short review of the last module and an overview of the new activities f
7. Active Learning in Small to Large Courses Owen L Astrachan Robert C Duvall Jeff Forbes Susan H Rodger Abstract This paper presents our experiences promoting active learning in programming courses from introductory to advanced levels We use a variety of techniques as our courses vary greatly in size and our facilities vary in layout and equip ment For large lectures we present active interludes that re quire students to work in small groups respond to periodic polls or help a professor program For moderately sized courses we ask students to work in groups and share their ob servations with the class Finally in our Interactive Computer Classroom we have almost completely departed from long lec tures to run the course in a workshop format giving students a chance to work on the computer almost everyday in a super vised safe environment In short although these techniques of ten require longer preparation time we show that active learn ing can be done in any classroom situation and students must be active everyday to remain engaged in the material Keywords Active learning computer science education co operative learning INTRODUCTION Students have several obstacles to overcome in their introduc tory programming courses learning about computer science learning about program design structured and object oriented learning about programming and in some cases learning to be a student at a college universi
8. The large ICC has 20 computers and 40 seats for stu dents while the smaller ICCs are have only 8 computers with 16 seats Roughly half of the ICC is designed for using the computers for the large classroom either 20 students working alone or 40 students working in pairs and half the room is de signed for working in small groups at movable tables Figure 1 shows a layout of the large ICC There are 20 rectangular ta bles each with one computer shown as a square and two seats shown as circles In addition there is a printer table labeled P a teacher s console labeled TC and 4 movable work tables The work tables can be spread apart for group work P SCREEN OO O00 00 0 0 OC0C00 00 OO 00 E O000 00 00 0000 0 0 0 0 0 0 00 OQ FIGURE 1 LARGE ICC LAYOUT The ICCs are designed to help instructors control the room by arranging the computers in a U shape around the sides and back of the room From the front of the room the instructor can view all monitor screens and can see quickly if anyone is falling behind or having difficulty The students face the front of the room for discussion and rotate facing the back or sides of the room to use the
9. ar to students For example in discussing compression and Huff man coding in CompSci 100 the introduction discusses Napster MP3 and lossy lossless JPEG GIF compression These discus sions focus not only on technical content but on ethical and pragmatic concerns in using Napster After the opening story material is presented in a traditional lecture format The key element of an active lecture is a reflective pause or in terlude Stopping a lecture after 15 minutes pausing a minute and then proceeding increases student comprehension 12 A reflective pause is directly related to the part of the lecture just given but engages students in answering a question or solving a problem related to the lecture For example in the lecture on Huffman coding students are shown how an optimal tree trie is constructed for encoding characters The lecture discusses the greedy algorithm used for the construction properties of greedy algorithms in general and the specific code used in generating a tree from a sequence of characters During the reflective pause students are asked two questions to test mastery and compre hension uncompress a sequence of 30 bits given a diagram of a tree storing 8 characters and think about creating change using a minimal number of coins when there are no nickels The first problem tests basic understanding of how information is stored in a Huffman tree The second requires students to think about possible alternatives w
10. diments to wide spread adoption of ac tive learning techniques by educators 17 the time and prepara tion required to develop materials the disparity between active learning and the educational experience of most academics some of which is tied to ceding some control in the classroom if lec tures are abandoned the perception that active lectures are too slow compared to standard lectures making it harder to cover as much material and the difficulty of ensuring students come to class prepared Since we believe students must be active every day to remain engaged in the material we have developed a few techniques to help address these issues There is no doubt preparing for active learning takes more time from both instructors and students Instructors must be bet ter prepared because the material needed in class may be more varied as students bring up issues from the reading or problems they are asked to solve Students as well must prepare before class by doing the assigned reading or preparatory work or they will be unable to participate in class When students are unable to be actively involved in the material the class typically reverts back to a lecture format One step towards ensuring students are prepared is pre class quizzes available before each lecture that must be completed by the time students enter the class These quizzes are meant to be fairly simple if the student has read the reading material and difficult for students
11. e that closely mirrors traditional lec ture styles and one that reduces lecturing to a minor component Duke University Durham NC 27705 csed cs duke edu Finally several issues specific to large courses are discussed in cluding ways to encourage equal student participation In each case several alternatives are presented each tailored to achieve our goals given different course environments STRUCTURE OF OUR COURSES At Duke University the computer science undergraduate courses range in size from 15 to 250 students Currently the introductory sequence of Computer Science courses for majors CompSci 6 and CompSci 100 ACM CS 1 and 2 8 are taken by more than 500 students per year Our non majors courses CompSci 1 CompSci 4 and CompSci 49S are taken by nearly 400 students each year with the majority of students taking CompSci 1 CompSci 1 ACM CS 0 is an overview of com puter science with a small programming component CompSci 4 is a non majors programming course and CompSci 49S is a special topics course for freshmen limited in size to 15 Our upper level undergraduate courses usually have between 30 and 80 students In total more than 1 500 students take a Computer Science course at Duke University each year Large introductory courses such as CompSci and CompSci 6 are structured to have a lecture two to three days per week and a small lab once a week To alleviate the burden of such large courses we have sometimes been able
12. hen a greedy algorithm does not work in certain situations Both questions can be answered by students individually in one or two minutes per question Some profes sors have students discuss the answers but this is not an integral part of an active lecture or a reflective pause A typical lecture is 50 75 minutes This leads to dividing a lecture topic into two or three 15 20 minute chunks with each chunk followed by a reflective pause Each pause requires a follow up to discuss the answers and to ensure students have a basic understanding of materials before proceeding In the beginning programming courses simply coding in front of the students can be very beneficial and leads to quality dis cussions It helps students better understand the programming process because they see typos compiler errors and other prob lems encountered when programming it makes them more at tentive because they try to find our mistakes before the compiler does and it seems to make them more experimental and willing to ask what happens when if Using this technique we have created a didactic form of pair programming in our large lecture courses The instructor is the driver while the class as a whole from 40 to 180 students works together as the navigator of the pair programming team 13 14 Workshops not just Labs Another type of active learning uses the workshop format and can be done in large or small courses during lecture or in an ICC Each
13. ice Hall 1996 10 Gregor M Novak Evelyn T Patterson Andrew D Gavrin and Wolfgang Christian Just In Time Teaching Blending Active Learning With Web Technology Prentice Hall College Division 1999 Pedagogical Patterns http www pedagogicalpatterns org Kathy L Ruhl Charles A Hughes and Patrick J Schloss Using the pause procedure to enhance lecture recall Teacher Education and Special Education vol 10 pp 14 18 1987 Owen L Astrachan Robert C Duvall and Eugene Wallingford Bringing extreme programming to the classroom 2001 XP Universe Conference Proceedings 2001 http www xpuniverse com Laurie Williams and Robert R Kessler Experimenting with industry s pair programming model in the computer science classroom Journal on Computer Science Education 2001 Dale Winter Paula Lemons Jack Bookman and William Hoese Novice instructors and student centered instruction Identifying and address ing obstacles to learning in the college science laboratory Jour nal of Scholarship of Teaching and Learning vol 2 no 1 2001 http www iusb edu josotl S Wolfman Making lemonade Exploring the bright side of large lecture classes Thirty third SIGCSE Technical Symposium on Computer Science Education pp 257 261 2002 Joseph Lowman Mastering the Techiques of Teaching Jossey Bass 1984 Blackboard http www blackboard com 11 12 13
14. lass for discussion We have found the last technique better than traditional tech niques for engaging students attention by giving them invest ment in the material presented In the past even when group activities were used there was little feedback provided to stu dents about their solutions nor was there any way for them to test their solutions In general there may be several solutions to a given problem but the instructor only had time to present one or two solutions Students were frustrated if their solution was different because they have no method for determining if their solution is correct Now more time is devoted to showing student solutions which usually vary more than the instructor s examples And the process of viewing multiple solutions in variably provides an easy way to discuss all of the pedagogical points we would have wanted to show Students show their work in a number of ways write their solutions on an overhead transparency with the pens provided write their solutions on ordinary notebook paper which is dis played using a document viewer or simply call out the next line of code for the instructor to type MAKING LARGE LECTURES MORE ACTIVE In teaching a large introductory computer science class it is especially hard to make lectures more active and create a better learning experience 16 Among the main problems with large cout lt lt Amanda Harris you ve won TEN lt lt million dollars l
15. nes attention and not have a dialogue with only the few students who always volunteer At any point in lec ture if there is a question to be asked about the material or if a student s work is to be selected to be displayed on the screen the pick a student system randomly selects a student and dis plays their picture and name on the screen If the selected stu dent answers the question they receive credit and their picture and name are removed from the pool The pick a student must be sufficiently employed through the semester to cycle through all of the students in the course at least once This requirement should encourage the instructor to ask many questions and re ceive feedback from a wide cross section of the students November 6 9 2002 Boston MA 32nd ASEE IEEE Frontiers in Education Conference XXX 3 It is vitally important students know it is reasonable not to know the answer and that any attempt is worthwhile When stu dents have no idea whatsoever they have several options sim ply say I don t know ask a question back to the instructor that may help elucidate the problem or call upon another student in the class or even their entire row to help them There are a number of added benefits to the pick a student system It makes it much easier for the instructor to learn stu dents names and that in turn seems to make students more com fortable interacting with the instructor both during and outside of cla
16. or that day The students work in pairs one computer per pair on the discovery exercises for most of the class period The instructor and teaching assistants actively monitor the room helping out and offering advice If many students are having the same problem all students are asked to stop working and a short discussion is held At the end of class a wrapup discussion is always held Here is an example of a CompSci 6 lecture using C In the third lecture students are given a 10 15 minute lecture on parameters function signatures and input They are then given the following program void Sweeps string city Session XXX the earlier exercises more quickly Work is checked off by the instructor or UTAs either at the end of class or at the beginning of the next class to allow those students who do not finish during class to finish outside of class For classes not run in an ICC many of these exercises are sim ulated using pencil and paper Students are given a worksheet with code and modifications to be done and give them time to work on these problems during lecture These exercises are dif ferent from typical closed lab sessions in a number of ways that help encourage a more collaborative atmosphere often students are working in pairs to complete the exercises the course staff is actively moving around the classroom eavesdropping and giv ing timely feedback and often student solutions are presented to the c
17. ss Students also seem to enjoy the process of seeing their faces appear on the big screen and wondering if their name will be chosen Presumably it has a similar draw as games of chance We have even used the pick a student system as a later assign ment in our CompSci 1 course that allows students to experi ment with randomness and arrays The pick a student system is fairly easy to create if you can get pictures of the students along with their names For a yearly cost the university can provide ID pictures for each student In stead we have tried a more playful approach by passing around a digital camera and sheet of paper on the first day of class The instructor takes a picture of the first student and each student subsequently takes a picture of another student with the last student taking a picture of the instructor Students sign the pa per in the order their pictures are taken Once the images have been saved with the students names there are several ways to display them we have written a simple program that reads in the directory of pictures and flips through the pictures randomly stopping on a student or on Windows and Macintosh comput ers standard slide show software can be used to flip through a folder of images Group Activities Organizing students into groups can lead to a more productive use of class time and can be beneficial to students in many ways We assign pairs of students in small courses and assign groups of
18. t lt endl cout lt lt Amanda that s what you will hear lt lt if you have the winning ticket lt lt endl cout lt lt Imagine Amanda you could be lt lt cruising in a Porsche down Main lt lt Street in lt lt city lt lt To lt lt endl int main Sweeps Georgetown return 0 There are several modifications students are asked to make The first one adds two more string parameters for first name and last name to the Sweeps function Next they call the Sweeps function twice once with each of their names and home towns Next they do several exercises intended to cause errors change one of the calls to pass just one parameter and pass the param eters in a different order Then they add a string variable to main for the first name and input the name Next they add statements to read in the last name and city That ends the first exercise There are two more exercises of modifying programs and a fourth optional exercise for those students who complete 0 7803 7444 4 02 17 00 2002 IEEE lectures are gauging how well the course material is being un derstood creating a more engaging and enjoyable learning en vironment and encouraging students to come to class on time and rewarding those that do come and participate Encouraging Participation One step towards addressing these issues we have developed is the pick a student system An important part of asking a ques tion is to get everyo
19. to do correctly by simply guessing This forces students to read or skim reading material making them better prepared to answer questions during class An ad ditional feature is that the instructor can look over a summary of the answers to quizzes before heading to class and can see which topics students understand and which ones students need further explanation allowing the instructor to adjust the focus of the lecture and perhaps skip or skim material that has been mastered Currently we use the Blackboard CourseInfo system 18 to administer online multiple choice quizzes An advantage of this system is that one can designate a specific time range during which the quiz can be taken Previously paper quizzes were given that were due when the students walked in the door A database of collected quiz questions is available from Ed Gehringer 19 CONCLUSIONS Collaborative learning in small groups increases interest and participation in class We have observed that giving students time to think during class results in more student participa tion in discussions and that discussions are more meaningful especially in uncovering misconceptions and misunderstand ings This approach also increases student confidence and self esteem We have observed that students who were reluctant to speak out in class are now eager to volunteer and discuss a solution that their group developed In evaluations of our classes using collaborative learning s
20. tudents overwhelmingly stated that they preferred the group problem solving format to the lecture format In addition female students most classes November 6 9 2002 Boston MA 32nd ASEE IEEE Frontiers in Education Conference XXX 4 contain 25 30 women made comments that rotating assigned groups gave them a chance to meet other students in the class that they would not have approached otherwise making them feel more comfortable in the classroom These findings reflect those of other researchers 20 Although less material may be presented during class we find that students understand the material more thoroughly We make up for our decreased pace by placing more responsibility on stu dents to work outside of lecture to prepare for class We ensure that they are not missing the basics by keeping tabs on their progress and adjusting our presentations to match their progress and not going over material it is clear they have mastered We continue to make our courses more active In the past we have integrated visual and interactive computer tools into the classroom 21 and toys into lecture 22 More recently we have found more effective ways to use computers in the classroom to change the way in which we present material to the students However almost surprisingly we have also found parallel ac tivities that do not use computers directly but achieve similar advantages REFERENCES 1 David Johnson Rodger T Johnson and Karl
21. ty To help this process we have developed a variety of techniques that encourage students to col laborate in problem solving during their scheduled lecture time Research in cooperative and active learning literature 1 2 3 4 5 shows that students master material to a greater de gree and retain more information when active learning is incor porated into the classroom Students engaged in active learning may write discuss or attempt problem solving during class as an alternative or in addition to lecture We tell students they cannot learn to program simply by read ing and studying the concepts they must practice programming as one would practice playing a sport or musical instrument However traditionally only separate closed labs 6 7 have been used to give students supervised hands on experience with conceptual material and the typical closed lab does not involve any dynamic exchange among students or between teacher and student In contrast interactive lectures are common in other disciplines such as humanities For example in a foreign lan guage course students and the instructor engage in conversation most of the class period either discussing exercises or acting out real life situations In fine arts studio sessions are held in which students review their peers The next section describes the structure of our courses and the facilities which support them Then two methods of active learning are discussed on
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