Learning and Teaching Conference 2012

Skill integration for students through in-class feedback and continuous assessment.

Konstantinos DimopoulosCity College

Talk Outline

• Some background• The challenge – Skill and knowledge

integration• Course outline and structure• Teaching and assessment methods– Lectures, workshops and continuous

assessment and feedback• Student achievement and impressions• Conclusions / Future directions /

discussionLTC 2012

Student skills

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Presentation Skills

Analytical and Synthesis Skills

Group work

Time management

?Good quality products

CS Course outline

• Levels 1 and 2 gather knowledge and develop necessary skills

• Level 3 produce good quality software

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Level 1 Level 2 Level 3

Programming Methodology and Design

OO Programming

Databases

Web programming

Industrial Project

Final Year Project

?OO Analysis and Design

Problems Identified

• Temporary knowledge and skills:– Students learn how to program in level 1 but do not apply

their knowledge when the time comes to do it as part of a project

• Modularity:– Students do not connect knowledge received from different

courses together.• Lack of understanding of usefulness:

– Students fail to understand why some courses are done, and what they should gain from them.

• Lack of experience:– Students have not worked at a large project until they have

to do the Industrial Project or worse their Dissertation

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What was needed

1. How to create good software2. Experience in taking part in a large project3. Somehow to put all the things they have

learned together

• Good software = correct and usable – HCI component missing

• Experience and integration = develop software from “scratch” in practice

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The Challenge

• The course should not repeat material they already know, but rather put to practice skills they picked up earlier, but they have to learn about usability and other HCI Concepts.

• A large project from scratch should be developed.

• Lots of work for the students = Assessment through the project only (no exam).

• no previous experience = continuous supervision and feedback over the whole project.LTC 2012

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HCI & SDiP course

This course is about two things:1. Principles of Human Computer Interaction (HCI).2. Complete process of producing proper software from

conception initial idea testing & maintenance• It ties together processes and concepts that

students have been introduced to in the previous semesters.

• It introduces some new material regarding building good User Interfaces.

• The process is demonstrated in class with the use of a case study (an example system), that the lecturer develops in class together with the students.

• 20 credits, 4 contact hours per week• 30% new material, 30% case study, 40%

workshops and presentations

Main Assessment

• In groups of 3-6 students develop a software that will satisfy a need of a “customer”.– Meet with the customer (a member of staff,

different for each group, with a different project) and understand what he wants and what he needs.

– Build the system, test it and release it.– reports: 20% and 50%, demonstration 25%,

participation 15%.– Group sizes depends on cohort. Groups are made

by the students with the approval of the lecturer– Difficulty of the project can vary. Its up to the

clients to adjust it according to the potential of the group.LTC 2012

Teaching methods

• Lecture / case study presentation (usually first 2 hours of the week)– Present HCI concepts– Develop a system in class with the students

• Workshop session / presentation (usually last 2 hours of the week)– In groups students follow the same steps as the

case study earlier that week, and demonstrate their progress, getting direct and instant feedback

– Present a major component of their project to the class and exchange ideas

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Workshop classes

• At the end of a lecture the lecturer assigns tasks to the teams for the workshop session.

• Students should prepare on their own and come to the workshop session with their solutions.

• During the workshop session all the groups work on their tasks, and the lecturer discusses with each group separately giving feedback (timesharing), assigning specific tasks to group members and assessing each student.

• Students are required to keep a log book that they present at the workshop sessions, and are encouraged to use online collaborative tools.

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Problems

• Students sometimes come unprepared.– They are marked with a fail in that weeks

participation. Then they are assigned specific tasks that they have to do in the class and are checked by the lecturer at the end.

• Usually 4-6 groups are created, and one of them are not working at all.– The problematic group is given specific

individual tasks, and the students that do not cooperate fail the course (have to repeat the process on their own to a limited degree).LTC 2012

Feedback in the workshop sessions

• Using time sharing, the lecturer deals with one group at a time, while the rest are working on their current tasks.

• The group on focus first presents how the feedback from the previous week was utilised. Then their progress on the tasks assigned the current week. (Oral) feedback is given for the new progress in the form of:– Direct observations on their work– Correlation to the case study– References to the taught material– References to taught material from previous

coursesLTC 2012

Things to be aware of

• Not to present the solution to the students, but let them discover it themselves.

• Each project is different and has its own particularities. However, there are common points.

• Each project has a different difficulty, and this has to taken in to account in the assessment.

• There is more than one approach to create any software, let the students find their way.

• All members of the group must be involved in an equal amount. Part of the workshop session is to detect who has done what in the group.

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Student impressions

• Liked the developmental feeling of the course.

• Believed that the HCI part would be very useful for their next projects.

• Commented about how different information from previous courses was necessary– “That’s why we discussed this in …”

• In most cases the resulting software was of top quality:– (http://csdprojects.city.academic.gr/)LTC 2012

Conclusions and Future Directions

• A hand on mainly course was created to provide the students with the necessary experience in working on projects from start to end and to integrate the skills and knowledge received from past courses.

• Continuous assessment + feedback in class individually to each group and each students was used in “workshop sessions”

• Better management of the time and feedback could be achieved with small informal deliverables, but it takes time

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