PeerWise (PW) is an online tool that allows students in a course to collaborate and learn by creating, sharing, answering and discussing multiple-choice questions (MCQs). Previous studies of PW at the introductory level have shown that students in computing courses like it, and report statistically significant learning gains in courses taught by the investigators at different institutions. However, we recently conducted three quasi-experimental studies of PW use in upper-division computing courses in the U.S. and failed to replicate these positive results. In this paper we consider various factors that may impact the effectiveness of PW, including instructor engagement, usage requirements and subject-matter issues. We also report several positive results from other STEM courses at the same institution, discuss methodological issues pertaining to our recent studies and propose approaches for further investigation.
This paper describes a process for establishing and maintaining a computer science education research group. Its purpose is to tell the story of one long-standing group, describe the benefits afforded by collaborative research groups and provide advice about how to form such a group. The intended audience is faculty members at teaching-intensive institutions who wish to establish or revive a research program in computer science education. We discuss establishing and maintaining a computer science education research agenda in a teaching-intensive environment.
Eclipse is an open-source development environment that is very popular with professional Java developers. This paper discusses the use of Eclipse in a data structures course. Students strongly liked using Eclipse in the classroom, and talked about it with their peers outside of the class. They also indicated slight agreement with statements that using Eclipse resulted in increased learning and that it made the course more interesting.
Previous research on the interaction between pairs suggests there is a positive relationship between transactive discussion and effective problem solving. Debugging is particularly problematic for novice programmers. Some previous studies suggest this difficulty may be lessened by working in pairs. Using transactive analysis, we examined interactions between five pairs of university-level introductory programming students as they debugged Java programs. Transcriptions of their verbal interactions were coded into transactive statement categories which revealed that the nature of participants' discourse varied. Extensions, feedback requests, critiques and completions were the most frequently observed types of transactions. Other transaction types were rarely detected in this context. The amount of discussion for the pairs varied as did the number of transactive statements. Results suggest that pairs who talked more and used completion transactions more often attempted more problems, but those who critiqued more frequently successfully debugged more problems. The teaching implications of this work and recommendations for future research are discussed.
PeerWise is a collaborative web-based system that engages students in the creation and evaluation of a test bank of multiple-choice questions. Previous studies involving two large CS1 courses in New Zealand have provided preliminary evidence that PeerWise usage is positively correlated with exam performance. In addition, it was reported that the student generated assessment questions were mostly free from errors and were clearly written, and the students appeared to positively value the system. Here we report on the first use of PeerWise in a CS1.5 course (second programming course) in the United States. Although the usage model was modified slightly to accommodate pedagogical factors, we highlight similar positive outcomes to those observed in New Zealand. Of particular note, students who were most active using PeerWise improved their rank in class relative to their peers who were less active.
This paper reports on the efforts of an ITiCSE 2007 working group with the aim of producing a publicly available, searchable, tagable, Web 2.0-style repository of short debugging videos. This repository may be accessed from http://debug.csi.muohio.edu/. The videos are aimed at novice Java programmers who may need help debugging when none is available (e.g. in the middle of the night before the homework is due). However, it could also be used by instructors of introductory programming. Here we discuss our motivation in creating this repository and detail the process we followed and the products we produced.
This article provides a review of educational research literature focused on pair programming in the undergraduate computer science curriculum. Research suggests that the benefits of pair programming include increased success rates in introductory courses, increased retention in the major, higher quality software, higher student confidence in solutions, and improvement in learning outcomes. Moreover, there is some evidence that women, in particular, benefit from pair programming. The literature also provides evidence that the transition from paired to solo programming is easy for students. The greatest challenges for paired students appear to concern scheduling and partner compatibility. This review also considers practical issues such as assigning partners, teaching students to work in pairs, and assessing individual contributions, and concludes with a discussion of open research questions.
There is now a substantial body of evidence in support of the use of pair programming in the classroom[3, 4, 10, 11, 13, 14]. Some of the data is anecdotal and some is the result of formal experiments. We are not aware of any published data that raises concerns about allowing students to complete programming projects using pair programming.In this paper we present data from three studies performed at UCSC. All three studies support the position that pair programming results in more student learning.
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