We improved on our peer-instruction approach to supplementary education sessions for CS1 by building on prior work in the Computer Science Education community for weekly review sessions. In this iteration, we adapted our materials from Java-only to include Python, and we studied students’ learning gains, motivation, and sense of belonging to the field of Computer Science. This poster is to share materials with the community along with lessons learned about important session features from the initial data analysis.

Learning gain information was collected by recording results of peer instruction questions during each session. By collecting the learning gain information, we validated that the peer-instruction approach led to improved correct responses and that the questions used must be created by an experienced instructor as expected from previous work.

Motivation and sense of belonging was measured by surveys of students during the course of the semester. We made four conclusions from survey data we collected. First, giving students incentives in the form of quiz retakes notably increased attendance. Second, students who did not attend the review sessions had a greater sense of belonging, likely because many of them were not struggling. Third, the primary reason students reported not attending is that they did not see value in attending, possibly because they have a greater sense of belonging than students who attended. Finally, the average sense of belonging increased in the course of the semester in students who identified with she/her pronouns and ever-attended our review sessions.