Scalable Remote Peer Help for Programming Education

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With support from the NSF Improving Undergraduate STEM Education Program: Education and Human Resources (IUSE: EHR), this project aims to serve the national interest by improving computer programming education. The project aims to augment the interactive textbook environment, Runestone, which offers online computer science courses with associated learning materials and programming exercises. The goal is to enable Runestone to provide context-specific help to students on exercises, including a mechanism to assist students in composing effective questions. The project team plans to develop predictive models for an accompanying system that matches students who are offering assistance with those requesting assistance. The effectiveness of the remote assistance system will be evaluated in three introductory Python programming courses: one at the lead institution, one at a community college, and one through a massive online course platform. Beyond increasing accessibility to help, this new functionality will support collaborative learning, which can help students develop a deeper understanding of course material as they clarify concepts through conversation. The project seeks to identify the factors that affect a student's willingness to help others, the effectiveness of the help, and the perceived learning value to the helper. By supporting students through collaborative learning, this project addresses the national demand for instructional resources to meet the increased demand for enrollment in computer science courses by both majors and non-majors.The goal of this project is to enable collaborative learning opportunities in computer programming courses offered by Runestone. To accomplish this goal, a tool that facilitates remote conversations about code (Chat.codes) will be extended and integrated into Runestone. This integration will enable students to request help from peers in the context of their online Runestone textbook. As students are working on an exercise, they will see requests for help associated with that exercise. Once a student clicks through to the conversation about a specific help request, the conversation will be indexed to code runs resulting from an editor shared by all participants. In addition to integration of a peer help function, the project will develop a tool to guide students in crafting well-formulated questions. Additional enhancements include the expansion of peer help beyond on-campus cohorts, thus increasing the pool of potential helpers, with the aim of matching help requests more selectively with helpers. This project has the potential to enrich computer science education in multiple contexts for thousands of students. The NSF IUSE: EHR Program supports research and development projects to improve the effectiveness of STEM education for all students. This is a Development and Implementation project in the Engaged Student Learning track. Through the Engaged Student Learning track, the program supports the creation, exploration, and implementation of promising practices and tools.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.