Mass Feedback Production

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Mass Feedback Production

• David Heaney

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Teaching Programming - Difficult
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Why ?
Answer No Feedback

• Large Classes
• Student Diversity
• Motivation

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Large Classes

• Difficult to give individual attention
• Loads of exercises to correct

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Student Diversity

• Prior experiences Pre-existing skills
• Expectations
• Motivations Hopes

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Motivation

• Programming is a skill
• Difficult to motivate students to engage
• Used to learning by heart

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Kolb Learning Cycle
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Expectancy-value theory

• Motivation expectancy x value

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Keller - ARCS

• Attention Relevance Confidence Satisfaction
• Provides feedback on performance promptly
  (Confidence)
• Makes statements giving recognition and credit
  to learners as appropriate (Satisfaction)

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What to do about it

• Pair Programming
• Graphical Programming environments

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Pair Programming

• Laurie Williams (North Carolina State University)
• Nawrocki (Poznan University)
• Robert Kessler (University of Utah)
• Charlie McDowell (University California)

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Graphical Programming environments

• Duke University
• JAWAA
• Starlogo
• Alice
• Karel

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Our Solution !
Mass Feedback Production

• Fast
• Accurate
• Detailed

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Introductory Programming in DCU

• Large class 200
• Three 1-hour lectures
• Two 2-hour labs
• 2nd year tutors (about 20)

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Introductory Programming in DCU

• Good improved pass rates

Gives busy lecturers a break Role Model
(Motivation) Good for Tutors Scalable
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Introductory Programming in DCU

• Bad students assignments

No Feedback
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Quality Feedback

• Comprehensive integrated environment
• Immediate feedback
• Student friendly
• The greater amount of feedback that learners
  receive before the end of course assessment the
  greater their opportunity to learn from such
  feedback Phil Race

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System

• Lecturer
• Tutors
• Students

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Lecturer

• Assignment Spec file
• Dead line
• Paired / Individual

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Tutors

• Check students submissions
• Supply feedback
• Edit their feedback
• Grade assignment

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Students

• Read specification
• Upload assignment
• Check feedback

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Tutor Applet

• WhiteBoard
• Code Formatter

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(No Transcript)
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Usage

• Flexibility appreciated
• Outside hours
• Outside lab days
• Problem some tutors didnt give feedback

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Opinion

• Tutors liked
• was able to mark assignments very quickly
• It was easy to write over the code and show
  exactly where errors occurred.

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Opinion

• Students liked
• It gave us a good idea about where we're going
  wrong in our programming
• it made program very easy to read (with colours
  etc)
• I could submit the code from anywhere at any
  time.
• Getting a pat on the back. We all like the
  praise we can get, ya know.

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Results

• Slightly positive affect on the results
• In particular for the low points at risk students

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