A s a field, computer science faces a problem. From 2000 to 2004, the percentage of first-year undergraduates planning to major in CS declined by more than 60 percent (see the "Declining Interest in Computer Science" sidebar). 1 To attract more students, the introductory CS curriculum must be motivating and relevant. CS courses that are set in a motivating context (for example, using multimedia, gaming, or robotics) can excite students and get them hooked. Other researchers have worked on introductory programming classes with robots as well as introduction to robotics classes (http://myro. roboteducation.org/robobiblio). We didn't want to create a robotics course but rather an introductory CS course based on robots. Introduced properly, robots make visible and tangible those aspects of CS that are often hidden behind computer screens and in computer memory. To further this goal, we formed the Institute for Personal Robots in Education (IPRE), a joint effort between Georgia Tech and Bryn Mawr College and sponsored by Microsoft Research (www.roboteducation. org). This article discusses the first-year results of a three-year project.
This paper describes the implementation and evaluation of a program that uses
active recruiting
and
peer-led team learning
to try to increase the participation and success of women and minority students in undergraduate computer science. These strategies were applied at eight universities starting in the fall of 2004. There have been some impressive results:
We succeeded in attracting under-represented students who would not otherwise have taken a CS course.
Evaluation shows that participation in our program significantly improves retention rates and grades, especially for women.
Students in the program, as well as the students who served as peer leaders, are uniformly enthusiastic about their experience.
It is common knowledge that enrollments in computer science have plummeted and educators are challenged to find ways to engage and promote success and retention of students while maintaining standards in introductory computer science courses. This study focuses on the implementation of a collaborative, modified peer-led team learning (PLTL) instructional approach in a large sized introductory computer science course. The site is a major southeastern university in the United States where all students are required to take one of three introductory computer science classes. The course version selected for this study specifically targets computer science majors and the study spans three years of data, and involves 591 students. Students who experienced the student-centered instruction and worked in small groups facilitated by a peer leader (treatment) in years 2006-07 and 2007-08 were compared with students who experienced a traditional recitation lecture section (control) in 2005-06. The content and the course owner was the same for all three years. Quantitative data analysis show marked and statistically significant improvements in student performance, for both male and female students. These findings suggest that using undergraduate leaders to implement a peer-led team learning model can be as effective in promoting achievement and retention in computer science education as it has shown to be in math and science classes over the past several years.
In the Peer Led Team Learning model (PLTL) many of the skills developed by students correlate well with desired learning outcomes in CSET programs. The authors report the results of a project to implement PLTL in introductory programming courses.An overview of the implementation model is provided, lessons learned are reported, and the assessment process and results are described. The research questions explored are: (1) What is the impact of the PLTL model on student skills and confidence regarding teamwork, leadership and communication? (2) How effective is PLTL in terms of building problem-solving skills in introductory programming? This project involved a pilot implementation followed by full implementation in the following year. Student peer leader surveys, along with a peer leader focus group, were used to analyze project impact and to plan for improvement in achieving the learning outcomes described above. Results indicate that students are satisfied with the peer led team learning model and that significant skill enhancement is occurring. In particular, a significant fraction of peer leaders in the second year of implementation came from those participating in the pilot.
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