An Asynchronous Learning Network Tool For Improving CS Education and Retention Rates

计算机科学教育遭遇了严重的危机--大量计划攻读计算机科学专业的学生在头两个学期就放弃了这门学科。这在很大程度上归因于新生的背景和计算机经验的差异。对于女性和少数族裔学生来说，留校危机更加严重，从而限制了CS群体的多样性。为了解决这些问题，该项目正在开发自定进度、高度交互和专注的编程项目，这些项目不会取代而是增加传统的整个项目作业，以帮助缩小计算机科学新生的背景差异。为了使这种方法可行，目前的网络技术正在通过WebToTeach整合到CS教学中，WebToTeach是一种基于网络的自动作业检查工具，使教师能够开发实验室练习并跟踪学生的进度。对于学生来说，WebToTeach提供了一种自定进度的编程基本元素的体验，提供即时反馈和解决问题的提示。该项目增强了WebToTeach原型的功能，将其扩展到数百个班级，提供数千个练习。目前正在开发适用于使用不同语言的各种本科计算机课程的习题库，以便全国各地的教师可以立即在课堂上向学生提供这一系统。来自四年制市政学院、一所宗教文理学院、一所社区学院、一所州立大学和一所高中的各种教师将参与练习的开发和评估，以证明这些材料在广泛的领域中是有用的。教师发展将是这个项目的一个重要方面，通过在国家会议上发表演讲和基于网络的教程来实现。该项目的另一个主要目标是教师准备为准备或目前参与中等教育事业的学生使用的课程开发WebToTeach课程。通过与教育学院教职员工和高中教师合作，WebToTeach正在被纳入职前教师技术课程，为未来的高中教师在高中水平上使用这项技术做好准备。它还将用于现有高中教师的在职培训课程。预期的结果是，进入大学的学生准备得更充分，计算机科学专业的多样性最终得到改善。该项目正在多个地点使用临床试验数据收集方案进行评估，试图衡量基于网络的练习和评估在提高学生保留率方面的有效性。

Computer science education suffers from a serious crisis- a large number of students planning a CS major drop the subject within the first two semesters of study. Much of this is attributed to the differences in backgrounds and computer experience of incoming students. The retention crisis is even worse for female and minority students thereby constraining the diversity of the CS population.To address these problems this project is developing self-paced, highly interactive and focused programming projects that do not replace, but augment, the traditional whole program assignments to help attenuate the differences in background of incoming computer science students. To make this approach feasible, current web technology is being integrated into the CS pedagogy through WebToTeach, a web-based automatic homework checking tool that enables faculty to develop lab exercises and track student progress. For students, WebToTeach provides a self-paced experience with the fundamental elements of programming, giving immediate feedback and hints at problem-solving.This project enhances the capabilities of the WebToTeach prototype by scaling it up to deliver thousands of exercises to hundreds of classes. Libraries of exercises, suitable for a wide variety of undergraduate computer science courses using different languages, are being developed so that faculty around the country can immediately make this system available to students in their classes. A variety of faculty from 4-year municipal colleges, a religious liberal arts college, a community college, a state university, and a high school will engage in the development and evaluation of the exercises to demonstrate that this material is useful in a broad range of domains. Faculty development will be an important aspect of this project through presentations at national conferences and web-based tutorials. Another primary objective of this project is teacher preparation to develop WebToTeach courseware for courses used by students preparing for or currently involved in secondary education careers. By working with college of education faculty and high school teachers, WebToTeach is being incorporated into the preservice teacher technology curriculum to prepare future high school teachers to utilize this technology at the high school level. It will also be used in inservice training courses with current high school teachers. The anticipated result is a better-prepared cohort of entering students at the college level and ultimate improvement in the diversity of computer science majors.Evaluation of this project is being conducted at multiple sites using a clinical trial data collection protocol in an attempt to measure the effectiveness of the web-based exercises and assessment in increasing student retention.