1. 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

2. 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

3. 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

4. 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

5. 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

6. 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

7. Bricks student view

8. Bricks admin dashboard