Combating anonymousness in populous CS1 and CS2 courses

ABSTRACT

One of the causes for unsatisfactory results in first year programming courses, as we have observed, is anonymousness: individual students mostly follow the course without recognition from their peers and their teachers, and this often discourages them. Therefore, increasing the visibility of what happens in the classroom and in the labs, as well as helping the students to know who their colleagues are and how they are performing can be very helpful. We recommend three complementary educational strategies which include video recording the classes and making the recordings available on the Internet to help students to review the lectures, using a web-based learning management system to foster the communication between teachers and students and among students, and increasing the visibility of student work by adopting an automatic grading system for lab assignments which can in parallel be used for self-assessment purposes.

REFERENCES

• 1: Camtasia, http://www.techsmith.com/.
• 2: Powel, W., and Gill, C. Web Content Management Systems in Higher Education. EDUCAUSE QUARTERLY, Number 2, 2003, 43--50.
• 3: Moodle, http://moodle.org/.
• 4: Cole, J. Using Moodle. O'Reilly Community Press, 2005, ISBN: 0-596-00863-5.
• 5: José Paulo Leal , Fernando Silva, Mooshak: a Web-based multi-site programming contest system, Software—Practice & Experience, v.33 n.6, p.567-581, May 2003 [doi>10.1002/spe.522]

INDEX TERMS

Primary Classification:
  K. Computing Milieux
  K.3 COMPUTERS AND EDUCATION
      K.3.2 Computer and Information Science Education
          Subjects: Computer science education

Additional Classification:
  K. Computing Milieux
  K.3 COMPUTERS AND EDUCATION
      K.3.2 Computer and Information Science Education
          Subjects: Self-assessment

General Terms:
Human Factors

Keywords:
CS1, CS2, content management system, educational strategies, introductory programming