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Introduction: Critical thinking is a vital component of postsecondary education. Active learning and experiential learning strategies in the classroom are effective ways to help students develop critical thinking skills. This paper focuses on two faculty development workshops, the purpose of which was to improve critical thinking skills through guided active and experiential learning opportunities. Over the past few years, we developed and facilitated these workshops on various postsecondary campuses, which have produced improvements in the attendees’ classroom assessments and students’ critical thinking skills. These faculty development workshops around critical thinking were designed to equip educators with pedagogical strategies that have been researched to work in relevant postsecondary classroom settings. During these workshops faculty members share their experiences with each other and work together to develop discipline-specific solutions that enhance teaching and learning. As a result, there is an opportunity to increase faculty engagement and interactions, which may lead to the development of a community of educators.
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This content will become publicly available on March 17, 2026
Incorporating Gamification Elements in Interactive Programming Workshops
The main objective of this qualitative study was to gauge the effectiveness of introducing algorithmic thinking and fundamental programming concepts such as variables, loops, and conditional statements to K-12 and undergraduate students through interactive classroom workshops. Using a game as the teaching platform, the classroom workshops were designed to approach programming concepts in a fun and engaging way to foster interest and increase participation in computing and technology, especially among underrepresented groups in the field. We strove to break down the stigma that programming was dull and boring, and that only people with innate ability could pick up the skill.
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- Award ID(s):
- 2315804
- PAR ID:
- 10637558
- Publisher / Repository:
- Association for the Advancement of Computing in Education (AACE)
- Date Published:
- Format(s):
- Medium: X
- Location:
- Orlando, FL, USA
- Sponsoring Org:
- National Science Foundation
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