Improving Content Learning and Student Perceptions in CS1 with Scrumage

Scrumage (SCRUM for AGile Education) is a recently proposed classroom management technique in which students are given autonomy to choose individually from a variety of pedagogies (e.g., traditional lectures, active learning, a flipped-based ap-proach, etc.). The result is multiple simultaneous pedagogical styles in a single course. In this paper we present the results of comparing six sections of an introductory programming course at the same university, three of which used Scrumage and three of which took a traditional approach. We adminis-tered surveys of both content acquisition and learning atti-tudes at the beginning and end of the course. While students in all sections improved in content learning, the students in the Scrumage classrooms outperformed those in the traditional sections. The improvement in content learning was also more uniformly distributed among students, not limited to the high achievers. Scrumage students showed generally improved atti-tudes about learning after the course, especially in the areas of Effort Regulation (perseverance in problem solving) and Con-trol of Learning (taking responsibility for learning success). We observed some correlation between this metalearning and improvements in content scores in the Scrumage sections, but not in the traditional sections. Finally, based on an analysis of student comments in the Scrumage sections, we show that as the course progressed, positive student comments about their abilities and confidence were more common, even as course material became more difficult. We believe that positive atti-tude changes we saw with Scrumage mean it has potential for widening the retention of students in Computer Science.