TY - JOUR
T1 - Experiences with lab-centric instruction
AU - Titterton, Nathaniel
AU - Lewis, Colleen M.
AU - Clancy, Michael J.
N1 - Funding Information:
The following section discusses the research-based foundation of individual activities used within our lab-centric instruction. (A considerable amount of the research has come from the WISE project – Web-based Inquiry Science Environment – directed by Marcia Linn and supported for many years by the National Science Foundation.) There is no particular set of activities that, by their presence, strictly define the lab-centric approach. However, the types of activities described below were incorporated throughout the design of our curricula because of their compatibility with our goals of collaboration, frequent feedback and scaffolded learning, and their amenability to delivery in a closed lab setting.
Funding Information:
Work described in this article was supported by the CITRIS project (Center for Information Technology in the Interest of Society), Hewlett-Packard Corporation, and National Science Foundation grants DUE-0443121 and CNS-0722339. The authors also acknowledge the support of Marcia Linn and Jim Slotta (directors of the WISE project) and Lois Wei (chief architect of the authors’ original online delivery system). Finally, the authors gratefully recognize the research and implementation contributions of numerous students and colleagues associated with their project over the past 9 years. Suggestions by the reviewers improved this article significantly.
Copyright:
Copyright 2011 Elsevier B.V., All rights reserved.
PY - 2010/6
Y1 - 2010/6
N2 - Lab-centric instruction emphasizes supervised, hands-on activities by substituting lab for lecture time. It combines a multitude of pedagogical techniques into the format of an extended, structured closed lab. We discuss the range of benefits for students, including increased staff interaction, frequent and varied self-assessments, integrated collaborative activities, and a systematic sequence of activities that gradually increases in difficulty. Instructors also benefit from a deeper window into student progress and understanding. We follow with discussion of our experiences in courses at U.C. Berkeley, and using data from some of these investigate the effects of lab-centric instruction on student learning, procrastination, and course pacing. We observe that the lab-centric format helped students on exams but hurt them on extended programming assignments, counter to our hypothesis. Additionally, we see no difference in self-ratings of procrastination and limited differences in ratings of course pace. We do find evidence that the students who choose to attend lab-centric courses are different in several important ways from students who choose to attend the same course in a non-lab-centric format.
AB - Lab-centric instruction emphasizes supervised, hands-on activities by substituting lab for lecture time. It combines a multitude of pedagogical techniques into the format of an extended, structured closed lab. We discuss the range of benefits for students, including increased staff interaction, frequent and varied self-assessments, integrated collaborative activities, and a systematic sequence of activities that gradually increases in difficulty. Instructors also benefit from a deeper window into student progress and understanding. We follow with discussion of our experiences in courses at U.C. Berkeley, and using data from some of these investigate the effects of lab-centric instruction on student learning, procrastination, and course pacing. We observe that the lab-centric format helped students on exams but hurt them on extended programming assignments, counter to our hypothesis. Additionally, we see no difference in self-ratings of procrastination and limited differences in ratings of course pace. We do find evidence that the students who choose to attend lab-centric courses are different in several important ways from students who choose to attend the same course in a non-lab-centric format.
KW - Blended learning environments
KW - Closed lab
KW - Collaborative learning
KW - Computer programming
KW - CS1
KW - CS2
KW - Embedded assessment
KW - Pedagogy
KW - Procrastination
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=79959518819&partnerID=8YFLogxK
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U2 - 10.1080/08993408.2010.486256
DO - 10.1080/08993408.2010.486256
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:79959518819
VL - 20
SP - 79
EP - 102
JO - Computer Science Education
JF - Computer Science Education
SN - 0899-3408
IS - 2
ER -