Web-based Learning for Introductory Computer Science Course

Session S1J

Work in Progress - Web-based Learning for Introductory Computer Science Course Gregory A. Moses, Debra Deppeler, and Michael Litzkow University of Wisconsin-Madison, [email protected]

Abstract - An introductory computer science course entitled "Engineering Problem-solving with Computers" uses a novel combination of in-class active learning laboratories and out-of-class web-based learning tools to teach sophomore engineers problem-solving skills using Maple and Matlab. This novel pedagogy is designed to maximize the benefit of in-class activities and to carefully regulate student out-of-class studying. A newly introduced tool, called CourseBuilder, is an XML based content management tool that resulted in remarkable improvement in student performance (one sigma improvement in exam grades) over past experience. We will describe the content and pedagogy of this course and how it differs from past practice. We will describe the further assessment that is required to better quantify the improved student performance. We will propose additional novel teaching practices to further improve student performance and reduce teaching costs. Index Terms – Active learning, Hybrid course, XML content. INTRODUCTION AND HISTORY The Engineering problem-solving with Computers course, CS 310, is taught by the Computer Sciences Department at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and is taken exclusively by engineering students; mostly sophomores. The course was originated in 1992 as a traditional course with two large lectures per week taught by a faculty member, and one computer lab section taught by a Teaching Assistant (TA). The course content was based around solving technical problems using two software tools: Maple and Matlab. The course had a poor reputation among engineering students, largely because it was lecture-based and the curriculum was predominantly skill-based (i.e. using these software tools to solve problems). In 2001 a major course redesign was done to eliminate the live lectures in favor of on-line lectures using a novel software tool called eTEACH [1]. Rather than lecturing, faculty taught team-based computer lab sections where 3student teams would solve realistic problems in the lab and thus get practice at problem-solving skills under the supervision of the faculty. This was referred to as reversing the lecture/homework paradigm where now students viewed the on-line lecture in their own time and worked on problems in the class time. This also reduced the number of class meetings from three to two per week although the number of

course credits remained at three. The original TA-taught skills-based computer lab was continued to be taught. There were two on-line quizzes per week, one on the content of the notes and lecture and the other was pre-lab quiz on the upcoming team lab. These were proctored quizzes in the TAtaught lab sections. There was no book for the course and all required course notes were available on the course web site. This presented a problem because the course content remained rather disjointed as a table on the course web site, where links to the expected learning outcomes, course notes, on-line lectures, skill labs with examples, team lab write ups, and homework were found. There was no cohesion between these different course elements. A checklist had to be printed for the students in order for them to record all of the course requirements for a week. This shortcoming of the course web site was remedied in the summer of 2006. At the same time, the course content was significantly modified because the release of Maple 10 with its new user interface obsoleted the previous course notes. Finally, the order of the Matlab content was significantly changed to address student performance issues in Matlab skills. CS 310 COURSE CONTENT WITH COURSEBUILDER The course content was redesigned with the aid of a new software tool called CourseBuilder. In the past, the content was organized as separate notes, on-line lectures, examples done in lab, and problems done in team labs. In the redesign, the notes were combined with the examples and related exercises were added so that students could more easily relate the problems being solved with the text information that pertained to those examples. The course was organized into three Units, each of which is organized into multiple Modules, which in turn are organized into multiple Lessones consisting of: Topic discussions, Examples, and Exercises. Each Topic Discussion fills about one web page and has links to associated Examples and Exercises. The Examples are drills in the use of the software, with answers provided with a mouse click. Exercises are the same as Examples except that the questions are slightly more abstract and open ended. Again solutions are provided and displayed with a mouse click. Students are told that if they read the Topic Discussions, drill themselves on the Examples and are able to complete the Exercises without having to view the solutions first, then they have mastered that learning outcome and can feel confident to proceed to the next Lesson. Each Module starts with a page of

1-4244-1084-3/07/$25.00 ©2007 IEEE October 10 – 13, 2007, Milwaukee, WI 37th ASEE/IEEE Frontiers in Education Conference S1J-3

Session S1J expected learning outcomes, informing the students what is expected of them. Each Module has a button that links to the eTEACH on-line lecture. Thus the new content is completely integrated and linked in a pedagogically sound way. This content format was borrowed from the successful Math Emporium project at Virginia Tech. The new format led to far fewer startup questions and lessened the learning curve for the students in this already unusual course format. The CourseBuilder software facilitated the rapid development of the new web content because it separated the creation of the content from the creation of the final web format. Content is entered into files using a Wiki-like mark up language that is a subset of XML. The files are organized in directories with manifest files that tell CourseBuilder where to find all of the content. CourseBuilder then “compiles” the web site from the content files, much in the same way that a higher level language compiler builds machine code from source code files. There is never a broken link or other problem. If a content file is changed, then a re-build is done with CourseBuilder and the updated site is installed. Thus CourseBuilder facilitates the building of course web sites while maintaining a pedagogically sound organization of the content. CONTENT REORGANIZATION In addition to the complete reformatting of the course content with CourseBuilder, the content pertaining to Matlab was radically changed. Historically we taught Matlab like a conventional programming course; starting with variables, assignment statements, followed by conditionals and loops and finally at the end discussing functions. Many students had difficulty with the concepts of loops and conditionals and were lost by the time they saw functions. This also led to a poor attitude about Matlab. In the reorganized curriculum we start with functions on the premise that students are familiar with the concept of a function both in the mathematical sense and in the procedural sense from their hand-calculators. We then proceed to Matlab’s powerful features to solve linear systems by introducing the direct input of matrices and vectors. We cover least squares data fitting using the polyfit and polyval functions. All of this is done without reference to the programming constructs of loops and conditionals. Finally, once students are more comfortable with Matlab syntax and can see the value of Matlab for problem-solving, we introduce the programming concepts of conditional blocks and loops. And then we introduce Matlab functions to find roots of algebraic equations and numerical solutions of ordinary differential equations. This alternative approach greatly improved student’s comfort with Matlab and led to a one standard deviation improvement in their test scores on the

non-programming aspect of Matlab compared to past performance. The final unit of the course on programming conditionals and loops and advanced function calls is still not satisfactory. Student exam performance in this area returned to historical levels in the last exam of the semester. FUTURE WORK Too many unrelated changes to the course were made at the same time to allow us to treat this with a rigorous education research protocol of measuring before and after student performance resulting from each new change. We did not divide our multiple sections into experimental and control groups because the changes made to accommodate the changes to Maple had to be done under any circumstances and keeping both the old and new content formats was not feasible. The curriculum change to the Matlab content could have been separated, but we did not feel that this was warranted for the small gain that we would get in collecting data. We have a new content organization with the new Maple lessons and the new order of Matlab lessons and a new content format using CourseBuilder. Our next step is to improve the Matlab programming lessons by simplifying them on the hypothesis that students can learn best by a few simple repeated examples rather than a large list of different possibilities and options. We want to continue to refine the examples to ensure they meet our learning outcomes and refine the learning outcomes to a manageable number. Finally we are proposing a “quizzing café” to the College of Engineering administration where students can come to take proctored on-line quizzes. This will allow us to eliminate the TA-taught skills lab that is currently part of the curriculum and thus reduce the number of classroom hours to one per week (in the team lab). Experience indicates that students come to the skills lab only to take the required quizzes and not to work through the lessons, examples and exercises. This relatively expensive TA cost can be saved with a central facility for quizzing. ACKNOWLEDGMENT This work was supported by the National Science Foundation and by the University of Wisconsin-Madison College of Engineering. REFERENCES [1]

Foertsch, J., G. Moses, J. Strikwerda, and M. Litzkow, “Reversing the Lecture/Homework paradigm Using eTEACH Web-based Streaming Video Software”, J. Engr. Ed. 91, July 2002, p. 267.

1-4244-1084-3/07/$25.00 ©2007 IEEE October 10 – 13, 2007, Milwaukee, WI 37th ASEE/IEEE Frontiers in Education Conference S1J-4