Computer Science Program and Dean of the College Present

Scalable and Effective Computer Science Education

As the global economy's demand for computer applications soars, the demand for well-trained computer science (CS) professionals is rising. This trend fuels a surge in CS undergraduate degree production, which, in turn, puts a strain on departmental resources. In addition, CS departments have to contend with poor retention, high dropout and failure rates, fragile learning, and bimodal outcomes. Thus, the need for scalable and effective teaching techniques in CS education is more significant than ever. In the main part of my talk, I will focus on how to make an existing scalable practice (that is, the automated grading of programming assignments) to be more effective by automatically providing formative feedback to students and a summary of the student errors and their associated concepts and skills to instructors. I will conclude my talk with current and future research interests and some preliminary results. For example, students struggle to acquire certain concepts and skills, such as the difference between value and reference semantics in Java. For this case, I will present preliminary results on the impact of a targeted intervention on students' learning. Then, I will speak more broadly about the lessons learned from this experiment and how they impact the prospects of scaling it.

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For more information, call 845-758-6822, or e-mail [email protected].

Time: 5:00 pm – 6:00 pm EST/GMT-5

Location: RKC 111

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