Digital “Show-How” Active Methods for Teaching Programming Keywords: active learning, rapid feedback, learn-by-doing, programming, collaboration Digital “Show-How” Active Methods for Teaching Programming David Stotts Univ. of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

Why? Problems to solve Educational Objectives Teach programming to mostly non-technical students as part of digital literacy Handle very large demand (>800 students per semester) with fewer TAs Improve class attendance to relieve TA office hours pressure, improve comprehension Educational Objectives Apply active learning methods Provide rapid effective feedback Promote participation in class, among students

When? Pedagogy Been teaching “code as I code” for >10 years Technical Support Bricks software developed over past 4 years 5 trials in COMP 110 classes at UNC-CH COMP 110 Intro Programming in JavaScript Same instructor each time (me) Class sizes range from 15 to 50 to 135

Where? Tried only at UNC-CH so far Class is synchronous, face-to-face, in-person format, 75-min, 2x a week, full semester Lecture is Digital “Show-How” or “code as I code, type what I type, do what I do” Experimenting with methods and software in more advanced programming-based course (data structures) Preparing an on-line video-based asynchronous version for spring 2017

What? Learning activities, materials developed Bricks software, programming environment Instant program auto-grading for rapid feedback Online help requests handled in-class by TA Students share code for class discussion Students build on prior work saved in DB Instructor has a “dashboard” showing real-time class progress What has worked really well? Bricks software is critical to success, facile, reliable It works: we learn best by doing, and discussing what we do TA use is way down, exam scores up, student “happiness” way up, class attendance above 85% in all classes, 98% in one instructor is having more fun than ever before

Prognosis? Impact Scaling Challenges From others at FOEE measured with exam scores, TA time, class attendance measured with post-class student evaluations from the UNC Center for Faculty Excellence Scaling Next in-person UNC class to 250 students Spring 2017 planned on-line asynch version, video based Challenges how to apply show-how methods up the curriculum chain success may be due to simplicity of material collaborative pair-programming student self-critiques (for on-line activities) From others at FOEE Ideas for applying to more complex information

Bricks student view

Bricks admin dashboard