Improving Student Sentiment of Active Learning in CS

In recent years, active learning as a pedagogical approach has increased in popularity in Computer Science (CS) education and other Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math (STEM) disciplines; the number of search results for "active learning" in the ACM Digital Library has roughly doubled from 2014 to 2019 alone. A recent study finds that when active learning is introduced in some STEM classrooms, students feel like their performance drops when empirical evidence shows that it actually increases [3]. Some of our previous work for Spring 2019 [2] anecdotally confirms those findings and prompted us to make changes for Fall 2019. The purpose of this poster is to report and reflect on those changes. The results suggest an improvement in student sentiment regarding active learning over those semesters. In this work, the term active learning refers to the approach described in Collins and O'Brien [1]; and peer-based active learning refers an active learning environment where undergraduate students called "Peer Learning Assistants" (PLAs) are utilized to help answer student questions during activities [4].

This poster describes the implementation details of two courses, CS2 and Discrete Mathematics, as taught during the Spring and Fall semesters in 2019 with a total initial enrollment count of 551 in the Spring and 490 in the Fall. It summarizes the results of a common set of anonymous exit survey responses collected by the instructors on a subset of that population, and it discusses the specific changes the course instructors decided to make based on the insights ascertained from the first semester survey. In these courses, active learning was implemented using a flipped classroom model with undergraduate PLAs. The surveyed population consisted of 163 CS2 students and 125 Discrete Mathematics students in Spring 2019 and 190 CS2 students and 140 Discrete Mathematics students in Fall 2019. The subset of questions presented in this poster are the following: (Q1) Given the option, would you rather work in small student groups on a problem in lecture (active learning) or watch the instructor solve the problem (traditional lecture)? (Q2) I felt comfortable asking questions to the professor. (Q3) After interacting with the Undergrad PLA(s), I feel like I ask better questions. Responses are summarized in Table 1.

The poster describes how the structure and presentation of course materials scaffold learning outcomes and allow students to build up towards higher stakes assignments. It also discusses some of the specific changes that the instructors made to both courses between Spring 2019 and Fall 2019, which are outlined below: i) incorporating strategies from the Transparency in Learning and Teaching (TILT) project; ii) using innovative, evidence-based instructional practices in accordance with our university's initiative for active learning; iii) further utilizing an undergraduate assistant experiential learning program where PLAs are hired and paid by the department and incorporating PLAs into all affected course sections; and iv) specifically focusing on morale early on by discussing past experiences and research results related to peer-based active learning with the students. These changes combined with survey results suggest that there are concrete steps that can be taken to improve student sentiment of active learning.