Search for: All records

Despite evidence of its effectiveness, Peer Instruction (PI) has not been widely adopted by undergraduate computing instructors. In PI, an instructor displays a hard multiple-choice question that students answer individually, then discuss their answer with peers, then answer again, and finally an instructor leads a discussion of the question. Even though the benefits of PI are well documented, it can be difficult to convince computing instructors to move away from passive lectures. Major reasons why instructors do not adopt PI include a lack of awareness, lack of time, and concerns over their ability to cover content. We hypothesized that we could encourage the adoption of PI by creating Peer+, a free tool in an ebook platform, a searchable question bank, and running summer instructor workshops. We offered a three-day in-person summer workshop to a total of 37 instructors in 2022 and 2023. Instructors completed a pre-survey, immediate post-survey, and a follow-up post survey after the fall semester. We also conducted semi-structured interviews with 17 instructors. On the immediate post-survey most (33/37, 89%) instructors reported that they were very likely or likely to use the tool in the fall. However, on the follow-up survey, less than a quarter (6/26, 23%) actually did. The number one reason for not using the tool was a lack of time (18/26, 69%). Notably, all of the instructors who used Peer+ planned to use it again. This work informs efforts to increase the adoption of evidence-based pedagogical approaches in computing. 

Novice programmers need to write basic code as part of the learning process, but they often face difficulties. To assist struggling students, we recently implemented personalized Parsons problems, which are code puzzles where students arrange blocks of code to solve them, as pop-up scaffolding. Students found them to be more engaging and preferred them for learning, instead of simply receiving the correct answer, such as the response they might get from generative AI tools like ChatGPT. However, a drawback of using Parsons problems as scaffolding is that students may be able to put the code blocks in the correct order without fully understanding the rationale of the correct solution. As a result, the learning benefits of scaffolding are compromised. Can we improve the understanding of personalized Parsons scaffolding by providing textual code explanations? In this poster, we propose a design that incorporates multiple levels of textual explanations for the Parsons problems. This design will be used for future technical evaluations and classroom experiments. These experiments will explore the effectiveness of adding textual explanations to Parsons problems to improve instructional benefits. 

Peer Instruction (PI) is a lecture-based active learning approach that has students solve a difficult multiple-choice question individually, submit their answer, discuss their answer with peers, and then submit their answer again. Despite plentiful evidence to support its effectiveness, PI has not been widely adopted by undergraduate computing instructors due to low awareness of PI, the effort needed to create PI questions, the limited instructional time needed for PI activities during lectures, and potential adverse reactions from students. We hypothesized that we could allay some of these concerns by hosting a three-day summer workshop on Peer Instruction for instructors and building and sharing a free tool and a question bank that supports PI in an open-source ebook platform. We invited eighteen instructors to attend an in-person three-day workshop on PI in the summer of 2022. We collected their feedback by using pre and post surveys and conducting semi-structured interviews. We report on the effect of the three-day summer workshop on instructor attitudes towards and knowledge of PI, the barriers that prevented instructors from adopting the free tool, and feedback from instructors who used the tool. The results show that most workshop attendees reported that they planned to use the tool in the fall semester, but less than half actually did. Responses from both users and non-users yield insights about the support instructors need to adopt new tools. This research informs future professional development workshops, tool development, and how to better support instructors interested in adopting Peer Instruction.