For lecturers who are used to presenting face-to-face, facilitating online classes through a virtual classroom interface proposes several new challenges. At the same time the affordances of the media offer many opportunities to improve the quality of students' learning. This paper outlines the pedagogical lessons derived from convening a first year introductory programming unit through a series of twelve, two-hour online classes. General virtual classroom strategies as well as those particular to computer science are described. Approaches to developing students' virtual classroom competencies, approaches to groupwork, and the implications of virtual classrooms for professional development and research are also discussed.
This paper shares insights about the deployment of groupwork activities in synchronous online classroom spaces. It is based upon analysis of 48 hours of online lesson recordings from an Introduction to Programming (in Java) subject conducted over two semesters. Key observations are shared about how factors such as the type of the activity, the level of student technological and communicative competencies, the interface design and the task specification influenced discourse and learning. On this basis recommendations for teaching using virtual classroom groupwork are offered in order to assist academics who may be considering similar approaches to teaching online.
Based on the systematic development of a curriculum for our undergraduate computer science units, an analysis of general education and CSE literature and consultation with other computer science educators, a taxonomy of task types in computing is proposed. These task types are related to one another in a hierarchical fashion based on their cognitive interdependencies. The taxonomy can be applied by academics to guide the development of curriculum that meets student process based learning needs rather than just content needs, the latter being the current norm.
This paper describes a computer science specific pedagogical pattern that has emerged from conducting a three semester design-research project investigating teaching computing online. The "Instructed-Teacher" pedagogical pattern distinguished itself as an effective interactive strategy for eliciting and developing students' mental models. The pattern is presented and key observations regarding its implementation are shared. The teaching and research context is described in order to assist transferability and inform validity.
This paper compares and contrasts three different approaches to pre-class concept formation in an online computing course. In the initial third of the semester students made individual responses to sets of weekly pre-class tutorial style questions. In the following four weeks a virtual classroom was used to facilitate the synchronous construction of group responses to the same type of activities. In the final third of semester a wiki was used to provide an asynchronous means of composing group responses to the pre-class tutorial questions. The different patterns of student contribution and interaction that resulted from each mode are described. Implications for concept formation specifically and learning generally are discussed.
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