POGIL Activities in Data Structures: What do Students Value?

This paper describes the creation, use, and evaluation of POGIL (Process Oriented Guided Inquiry Learning) activities in a Data Structures course. POGIL draws upon constructivist and collaborative learning theories in which students work in teams through guided sets of questions. The purpose of this study was to see how students valued POGIL activities in terms of their learning. Survey responses were used to assess how students valued POGIL. Over 90% of students stated that POGIL helped them learn the material. Not only did it help them learn data structures, they reported value in working through problems with others, seeing how others think, being accountable for their own learning, and using the activities to review the material. Overall, POGIL was valued by students and this teaching method could be of value to other computing courses.