UC-WISE overview1 The UC-WISE Project: Online curricula for monitored, closed-lab first-year CS courses UC-WISE = “University of California Web-based Instruction for Science and Engineering” Project leaders: Mike Clancy Marcia Linn Nate Titterton

UC-WISE overview2 A UC-WISE course vs. a traditional-format course Students attend 0-1 lecture hr/wk, 4-6 lab hrs/wk. Students engage in online collaboration and impromptu face-to-face discussions with neighbors or staff. Most work is done in super- vised lab; context is clear from earlier exercises; help is always available in lab. Staff monitors activities, engaging students in timely tutoring if necessary. Students attend 2-3 lecture hrs/wk, 2 lab hrs/wk. Students attend a weekly “discussion” section. Homework is unsupervised; students may not be clear about skills/techniques to use; help is harder to get. Students may be unaware of misunderstandings, and may wait weeks to address them.

UC-WISE overview3 Lab-based course logistics Activities are all online, presented in a custom course “portal”. Lab sections each contain around 25 students and are each staffed by an instructor and 1-3 lab assistants.

UC-WISE overview4 Lab activities Web page reading quizzes and self-assessments online focused discussion “gated collaborations” face-to-face collaboration online note-taking programming constrained interactive programming tasks Increased lab time allows activities to be organized in relatively small conceptual steps:

UC-WISE overview5 Benefits to students Replacement of lecture with lab –More work, but less bogging down –Small steps from activity to activity Frequent embedded assessments Just-in-time targeted tutoring More efficient interaction with staff Flexible pacing Collaboration among students Engagement of traditionally underserved groups

UC-WISE overview6 Benefits to instructors Easy modification of the curriculum Exposure of student misconceptions Less lecturing, but more staff training, curriculum tuning, or review of student work Better focus for lectures

UC-WISE overview7 UC-WISE courses so far “Introduction to Symbolic Programming” (intro for nonmajors) at Berkeley “Data Structures and Programming Methodology” (essentially CS 2) at Berkeley “Introduction to Computing for Engineers” (intro for sci/eng) at Berkeley “Introduction to Computing I” (intro for sci/eng) at Merced “Introduction to Computer Science and Engineering” (CS 1.5) at Merced

UC-WISE overview8 CCLI-funded work Lab-based UC-WISE curricula for CS 1 and CS 2 courses using Java Collaboration with colleagues at U.C. Merced, U.C. Irvine, and U.C. San Diego

UC-WISE overview9 Future work: tools For the instructor: better monitoring of student progress For students: better curriculum access, toolkits for interactive programming pages, collaborative toolkit For curriculum designers: Learning Object repository, metadata definition and browsing facilities, course “builder” that’s integrated with a library of pedagogical patterns

UC-WISE overview10 Future work: educational research Research on synchronicity and on value added by new activities (discussion, gated collaboration) Comparison of online vs. face-to-face collaboration Exploration of differential performance of groups traditionally underrepresented in CS Research on various kinds of immediate feedback Evaluation, evaluation, evaluation: interviews and surveys

UC-WISE overview11 For further information... “New Roles for Students, Instructors, and Computers in a Lab-based Introductory Programming Course” (SIGCSE 2003) reports initial experience with lab-based courses using the UC-WISE system. Guest login to last semester’s courses is available at Various relevant documents are online at