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ISM-3232: Business Application Development

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Abstract
Title Using Classroom Presenter and Ubiquitous Presenter as a Substitute for Face-to-Face Lectures in an Introductory Programming Course
Contact Dr. T. Grandon Gill
ggill@coba.usf.edu
813-974-6755
Principal Investigator Dr. T. Grandon Gill
Department Information Systems and Decision Sciences
Brief Description HP mobile technology was used to radically alter how the introductory programming course taught to MIS majors is conducted. The key element of the innovation is replacing traditional face-to-face lectures in the classroom with interactive learning sessions using Classroom Presenter or Ubiquitous Presenter to engage students.
Quick Facts
Courses Impacted 1 (9 sections)
Number of Students Involved 140
Number of Faculty Involved 3
Rationale

Teaching introductory programming to MIS majors in a college of business is extremely challenging. First, there is a huge range of backgrounds to contend with. For example, at USF, a typical class might consist of 50% who have never encountered programming before, 25% who have taken one previous programming course, and 25% who have taken 2 or more previous courses. Second, there is a motivation issue to contend with, as many MIS majors do not believe that a knowledge of elementary programming will be of particular use to them. Moreover, in a typical class, a substantial fraction of students (e.g., 20% of spring 2006) have transferred out of computer science programs specifically because they had little interest in (or, in some cases, aptitude for) programming and similar activities.


As a backdrop to this challenge, MIS majors have experienced a precipitous drop in enrollments since 2001, with the 75% that we have experienced (from 1100 to about 275) being fairly typical. This fact places a further constraint on us--the need to retain as many of the few majors that remain as possible.

In the context of this environment and the challenges inherent to teaching programming to MIS majors, USF decided to undertake a major redesign of its introductory programming course (Ism3232) in Fall 2006. That course--already unusual in its use of a self-paced structure to accomodate disparate backgrounds (see References)--wwas to be further re-engineered in three important ways:

  1. C# replaced ANSI C++ as the language being taught
  2. Assigned projects were modeled after various types of games (e.g., a fantasy game, bingo, a video game)
  3. Lectures, already available online, would be eliminated from face-to-face classes, replaced by interactive activities

Objectives (1) and (2) were specifically implemented to increase the motivation level of students (the self-paced structure, which was retained, being used to accomodate differing backgrounds). Objective (3), on the other hand, was intended to address a final issue: the abysmal retention of lecture-delivered knowledge that we were observing as students left the class.

The use of Tablet PCs in class (or lab PCs, if Ubiquitous Presenter is used) was a central element of our implementation of our transition away from lectures. Based on the many positive reports of instructors who had used these tools in computer science, we felt it offered great promise in increasing comprehension and retention, both by forcing students to take an active role in their learning processes and by allowing the instructor to better diagnose the varying levels of understanding present in the class.
Implementation
Pedagogy

From fall 2001 to spring 2004, Ism3232 evolved from a traditional classroom lecture course to a blended, fully self-paced structure (fully self-paced meaning that every assignment was due on the final Friday of the semester prior to exam period). The initial push towards a blended course was motivated by our need to accomodate the huge growth in the number of our MIS majors. Ironically, the self-paced element was introduced principally in order to help us retain our rapidly shrinking population of majors.

Although the course did relatively well in instructor evaluations (by the lower standards of programming course evaluations), continued dwindling in our major population forced us to further rethink the course. For fall 2006, the course was redesigned (as noted in the rationale section), replacing C++ with C# and creating student assignment based on game metaphors.
The key elements of the redesigned course are as follows:

  • All traditional content is available online. This content consists of online lectures (authored with Camtasia), readings to parallel each lecture (authored using SoftChalk) and assignment walkthroughs (authored using SoftChalk with embedded Camtasia segements showing the project core being built in Visual C# Express Edition). Every piece of course content (roughly 120 segements in all) indluded embedded multiple choice quizzes and was delivered in a SCORM format to Blackboard.
  • Activity-based class formats. Each week, the three hours of avaialble class time is divided into two equal segments. The first, the "fundamentals" segment, is delivered using Classroom Presenter or Ubiquitous Presenter (depending upon where its being held) and involves the instructor presenting the class with short problems that they then try to solve--with the answers being sent back, displayed and discussed with the whole class. The second segment is a lab section, in which students come to a lab where the instructor or a TA helps them with their assignments and proctors validation exams. Class is currently optional for students who submit assignments by specified target dates.
  • Validation-based grading. The course is divided into 5 modules, with points being available completing online readings and lectures, as well as completing assignments. No points are awarded, however, until the student passes a validation exam (delivered in the lab). Students may retake a validation exam once, after which module points can only be acquired through an oral exam with the instructor. Beyond validating module points, however, these exams have no impact on the student's grade.
Links related to the self-paced pedagogy and assignment centered design used for the course can be found in the references section.

 
Technology

The Tablet PC technology supplied by the grant is being used in two ways, only one of which is new to the course:

  1. Content development, with pen and whiteboard content frequently being used in the instructord online PowerPoint presentations (captured with Camtasia).
  2. For interactive classroom activities, with Classroom Presenter (CP) being used in traditional classrooms (using a peer-to-peer network, since USF's wireless network defied our efforts at multicasting), and Ubiquitous Presenter (UP) being used as a similar manner when classes are helf in the computer lab.
These tools were implemented by the instructor with a minimum of technical support. In fall 2006, CP was pilot tested for about half the semester. In spring 2007, both CP and UP were used for all three sections of the course. In summer 2007, we reverted back to CP alone.
Impact on Teaching

Our specific goals for the project are as follows:

  • To increase student interest in programming, which is a core discipline that could be (at least) familiar to any MIS professional.
  • To increase student retention of what they are taught, particularly as it relates to fundamental concepts.
  • To increase student enthusiasm for the course, as measured by instructor evaluations and other measures.

The instructor's view of the problem is as follows:

It is nearly impossible to teach a student something that he or she does not want to learn. The key to our success therefore rests on our ability to make our material relevant, engaging and approachable. Using technologies to assist us in this effort is inevitable; the things we tried before simply didn't work.

To address these goals, under the new course structure, nearly all class time is devoted to interactive activities (e.g., use of Classroom Presenter, answering student questions in a lab setting), with traditional knowledge transfer activities (lectures, readings) being available online. We continue to tune these activities--since some students (in spring 2007) complained that some of the sessions were becoming repetitive, but the basic structure seems to be working well (see "Student Learning" section). In fall 2007, we intend to run three sections of the course with three instructors, two of whom will use a more traditional course pacing, while the PI continues with the self-paced approach. This will better allow us to determine the degree to which self-pacing can be decoupled from the remaining aspects of the course.
Impact on Student Learning

For 4 years, we have been tracking the progress of Ism3232 with a large (250+ item) survey that students can take at the end of each semester for extra credit (approximately 70% choose to). Our particular interest is in seeing changes in:

  • Self-reported satisfaction measures
  • Self-reported effort (time spent) measures, and
  • Self-reported learning measures
In addition to these self-reported measures, we track two additional key measures: retention (percent of students with A, B on C grades, which is equivalent to percent of non-DWF students) and material covered. Average grade of non-DWF students is a good proxy for this latter measure in a self-paced course, since a student's grade is largely determined by amount of material completed.
One Year Ago
Student evaluations of Ism3232 hovered in the 3.8-4.0 range (out of 5.0). Self-reported effort was unrealistically high (roughly 16 hours per week was the average, about twice that of a normal MIS course). Professors in the subsequent Java course found it difficult to believe that many of the students (particularly, the "C" students) had ever had a programming course before.
Today
The results from the fall 2006 semester were extraordinarily successful. On all three measures of success, significant gains were observed.
Table 1

 

Fall 2006

Spring 2006

Fall 2005

Spring 2005

Fall 2004

Spring 2004

Maximum Section Average –
Overall Instructor Evaluation
(1=Poor, 5=Excellent)

4.73

4.54

4.28

3.50

4.00

4.10

Median Section Average –
Overall Instructor Evaluation  (1=Poor, 5=Excellent)

4.60

3.77

4.20

3.38

3.85

4.00

Minimum Section Average
Overall Instructor Evaluation
(1=Poor, 5=Excellent)

4.25

3.50

3.90

3.27

3.80

3.90

3 Section Mean  –
Overall Instructor Evaluation
(1=Poor, 5=Excellent)

4.53

3.94

4.13

3.38

3.88

4.00

Students Enrolled

71

70

77

86

82

91

Students Surveyed

41

28

34

39

36

34

Retention (% of A, B and C grades for combined sections)

72%

63%

61%

52%

61%

56%

Missing student %  – Percent of students accumulating no points

1%

11%

13%

9%

10%

11%

Average grades of retained students (not DWF)

3.27

3.32

2.90

3.06

3.14

2.50

Average points accumulated (out of 1000) of students surveyed

703

725

640

713

681

585

Satisfaction with type of assignments (1=very dissatisfied, 5=very satisfied)

4.00

3.85

3.50

3.38

3.30

3.37

Satisfaction with multimedia content (1=very dissatisfied, 5=very satisfied)

4.63

4.25

3.78

3.75

3.75

3.66
Self-paced format (1=not helpful at all, 3=moderate help, 5=extremely helpful)

3.78

N/A (survey inst. error)

3.20

2.53

3.00

2.80

For fall 2007, average grade measures remained comparable to those of previous semesters, which is significant since it suggests that the positive satisfaction results were not the result of simple grade inflation (comparisons in GPA measures to pre-Fall 2006 sections are not meaningful with respect to amount of material covered, since earlier sections involved a different language and entirely different assignments).

For spring 2007, evaluation and other satisfaction measures are still being tallied. What we know, to date, was that the 91% retention rate (42 out of 46 students) was the highest ever seen in the course, and the grade point average of non-DWF students (3.61) was also higher. These numbers, we believe, are significant because precisely the same materials and grading schemes were used as were used in the fall 2006 semester. What is harder to tell is the degree to which the innovative course structure resulted in these outcomes (versus the use of Tablet PCs in the fundamentals sections).
One Year From Now
During the spring 2007 semester, two individuals (a faculty member and a doctoral student) scheduled to teach the class in fall 2007 attended all the Tablet PC sessions. To help achieve the objective of determining the relative importance of the Tablet PC sessions (vs. the overall course structure) in achieving these very promising results, they will be teaching 2 sections using a more traditional pacing, while still incorporating the Tablet PCs. The PI will continue to teach one section using the self-pacing. The degree to which the results across all three sections differ will give us some insights into the relative importance of self-pacing. This would be an important, since the instructor has observed that self-pacing works against the fundamentals sessions as the semster progresses--since it's very hard to find material that is relevant to all students, given they are all working on different parts of the course at any given time.
Student Comments

Selected comments from student evaluations:
The layout for this course was very unique and practical for the working professional with the self-control needed to work at a reasonable pace without constant supervision. It was very open-ended and was the first course I had that really focused on the student "learning" the material rather than memorizing answers for an exam only to forget them days later. This class not only taught me a very valuable skill, but has also ignited a passion for programming that I had not previously had.

Well I thought this course was one of the baset courses I have ever taken. The instructor put a lot of time into the preaparation and organization of this course which made it very fun and yet I really was able to learn a lot. Excellent Job, much KUDOS for helping us to learn programming more effectively.

Professor Gill was always available to answer any questions about the assignment and was very thorough in his video walkthroughs. I believe the use of Blackboard and the course lectures and readings, with the help of the videos made this course extremely interesting and achievable.

I felt this class gave me a good grasp of the concept of C# programming, but I’m not quite ready to write my own programs.  I loved how the course was self-paced which allowed me to spend time on my assignments during my own time.  It was very helpful, because I could work on assignment around my other classes and work.  The videos were very helpful for me as well.  Especially, this being my first programming class.  It helped me get through the rough times.  I attended course lectures when needed and received excellent help from the TA’s.
Websites, Presentations and Publications
Web Sites
Course Web Site: http://ism3232.coba.usf.edu

Presentations

  • Submission to DSI Innovative Curriculum competition (Fall 2007; will be presented as a paper if not chosen to be a competition finalist)
  • DSI Panel on Innovative Education (Fall 2007)
  • Invited book chapter on classroom technologies (forthcoming)

Publications