Fwd: [SIGCSE-members] Teaching intro CS online

[Jean Griffin]

An interesting perspective about teaching CS online from UC Riverside's Frank Vahid (on the ACM SIGCSE mailing list)

---------- Forwarded message ---------
From: Frank Vahid <va...@cs.ucr.edu>
Date: Thu, Aug 6, 2020 at 9:04 PM
Subject: [SIGCSE-members] Teaching intro CS online
To: <SIGCSE-...@listserv.acm.org>

Hi gang. In response to the question I get commonly in this COVID-19 era of how UCR teaches our intro CS online (one 80-student section per quarter since 2013, majority non-CS majors), I thought I'd summarize here. 

• Reading: Students learn and practice basics before lecture
• Lecture: 3 hrs/wk total, synchronous, on Zoom, mostly live coding of examples
• Students polled every 3-5 minutes, as in "What's this code output?" or "Write the next statement", responding in chat. 10% of grade is for (minimal) participation.
• Students ask/answer questions via chat -- no video/audio. Prof (and TA) broadcast live video/audio. Recording available to students. 
• Prof makes lots of coding mistakes, and discusses mistakes seen in polls, creating a "culture of mistakes", to put students at ease
• Homework: About 20-30 5-10-line auto-graded homework problems each week (code writing or code reading)
• Programming assignments: Weekly many-small-programs approach, auto-graded with instant points feedback.  MSP reduces need for help (stuck students can switch to next program), full-credit threshold also reduces pressure (80% of available points yields full credit).  TA holds a 2-hr lab session, students work on programs, can ask questions. Collaboration encouraged (similar code OK), but must indicate who worked with, should each type their own code, group size should be reasonable (2-5).  
• Discussion: Both Piazza and Discord. Last quarter, students posted 200 times to Piazza and 2,000 times to Discord. They love Discord. 
• Net result is a nice grade distribution -- few DFWs, lots of As/Bs --, and course evaluations 4.5 of 5, putting in top 80% of all UCR classes. Solid performance in follow-on classes. Different instructors have stepped in and taught, gotten good results their first time. 

Note: When we started in 2013, was mostly asynchronous, poor results -- our students (mostly young, first-gen, low-income, minority) needed to be "part of" something.

Note: With COVID-19, replaced in-person proctored midterm/final with lots of low-stakes quizzes plus custom/fun final project. Class become de facto pass/fail: Mostly As, just a few Bs-Fs. 

For quizzes/exams, we use a program auto-grader, but working towards the Univ. of Illinois model of auto-generated auto-graded code writing/reading exams such that students can practice and each gets unique exam (Craig Zilles' work). 

There are many ways to run an online intro CS course. This one works well for our students. Hope this helps others. Happy to answer questions. Love to hear other approaches too. 

Frank

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Frank Vahid

Professor of CS&E, University of California, Riverside

P.S. More info in "An online course for freshmen? The evolution of a successful online CS1 course" FYEE Annual Conference, 2020, link can be found on my pubs page: https://www.cs.ucr.edu/~vahid/pubs/

P.S.2: I'm heading out for 2 weeks, email replies might be slow, but wanted to send this beforehand in case it helps some people plan for fall, approaching fast.