Blogs (3) >>

This program is tentative and subject to change.

Fri 28 Feb 2025 11:22 - 11:41 at Meeting Rooms 315-316 - Instructional Technologies #1

Despite evidence of its effectiveness, Peer Instruction (PI) has not been widely adopted by undergraduate computing instructors. In PI, an instructor displays a hard multiple-choice question that students answer individually, then discuss their answer with peers, then answer again, and finally an instructor leads a discussion of the question. Even though the benefits of PI are well documented, it can be difficult to convince computing instructors to move away from passive lectures. Major reasons why instructors do not adopt PI include a lack of awareness, lack of time, and concerns over their ability to cover content. We hypothesized that we could encourage the adoption of PI by creating a free tool in an ebook platform, a searchable question bank, and running summer instructor workshops. We offered a three-day in-person summer workshop to a total of 37 instructors in 2022 and 2023. Instructors completed a pre-survey, immediate post-survey, and a follow-up post survey after the fall semester. We also conducted semi-structured interviews with 17 instructors. On the immediate post-survey most (33/37, 89%) instructors reported that they were very likely or likely to use the tool in the fall. However, on the follow-up survey, less than a quarter (6/26, 23%) actually did. The number one reason for not using the tool was a lack of time (18/26, 69%). Notably, all of the instructors who used the free tool planned to use it again. This work informs efforts to increase the adoption of evidence-based pedagogical approaches in computing.

This program is tentative and subject to change.

Fri 28 Feb

Displayed time zone: Eastern Time (US & Canada) change

10:45 - 12:00
Instructional Technologies #1Papers at Meeting Rooms 315-316
10:45
18m
Talk
Analyzing Pedagogical Quality and Efficiency of LLM Responses with TA Feedback to Live Student Questions
Papers
Mihran Miroyan UC Berkeley, Chancharik Mitra University of California, Berkeley, Rishi Jain UC Berkeley, Gireeja Ranade University of California, Berkeley, Narges Norouzi University of California, Berkeley
11:03
18m
Talk
ASCI: AI-Smart Classroom Initiative
Papers
Nada Basit University of Virginia, Mark Floryan University of Virginia, John R. Hott University of Virginia, Allen Huo University of Virginia, Jackson Le University of Virginia, Ivan Zheng University of Virginia
11:22
18m
Talk
Can a Free Tool in an Ebook Platform, Searchable Question Bank, and Summer Workshop Help Instructors Adopt Peer Instruction?
Papers
Barbara Ericson University of Michigan, Xingjian Gu University of Michigan, Zihan Wu University of Michigan, Shefali Patel University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, Aadarsh Padiyath University of Michigan - Ann Arbor
11:41
18m
Talk
What Can Computer Science Educators Learn From the Failures of Top-Down Pedagogy?Global
Papers
Sverrir Thorgeirsson ETH Zurich, Tracy Ewen ETH Zurich, Zhendong Su ETH Zurich