Morin, B., & Kecskemety, K. M. (2021, July), Collaborative Parsons Problems in a Remote-learning First-year Engineering Classroom  Paper presented at 2021 ASEE Virtual Annual Conference Content Access, Virtual Conference. 10.18260/1-2--36809

\bibitem{asee_peer_36809}
  Morin, B., \& Kecskemety, K. M. (2021, July), \emph{Collaborative Parsons Problems in a Remote-learning First-year Engineering Classroom}
  Paper presented at 2021 ASEE Virtual Annual Conference Content Access, Virtual Conference.
  10.18260/1-2--36809

Brooke Morin and Krista M. Kecskemety.  "Collaborative Parsons Problems in a Remote-learning First-year Engineering Classroom".  2021 ASEE Virtual Annual Conference Content Access, Virtual Conference, 2021, July.  ASEE Conferences, 2021.  https://peer.asee.org/36809 Internet.  23 Apr, 2024

\bibitem{asee_peer_36809}
  Brooke Morin and Krista M. Kecskemety.
  "Collaborative Parsons Problems in a Remote-learning First-year Engineering Classroom".
  \emph{2021 ASEE Virtual Annual Conference Content Access, Virtual Conference, 2021, July}.
  ASEE Conferences, 2021.
  https://peer.asee.org/36809 Internet.  23 Apr, 2024

@INPROCEEDINGS{asee_peer_36809
author = "Brooke Morin and Krista M. Kecskemety"
title = "Collaborative Parsons Problems in a Remote-learning First-year Engineering Classroom"
booktitle = "2021 ASEE Virtual Annual Conference Content Access"
year = "2021"
month = "July"
address = "Virtual Conference"
publisher = "ASEE Conferences"
note = {https://peer.asee.org/36809}
number = {10.18260/1-2--36809}
}

TY  - CPAPER
AB  - This complete evidence-based practice paper examines the impact of a classroom activity to teach programming to first-year engineering students. Programming and logic are vital components of an engineering education.  While some may assume programming is only important in computer science, many engineering disciplines use computer software, which requires programming and logic. This is why it is common to teach introductory programming to all engineering disciplines. However, students often struggle to learn programming and come into the first year of engineering with a wide range of prior programming experience. The differences can be due to access of computer science courses at the high school level, the level of instruction in these courses, and the self-selection bias in enrolling in these courses. It has been shown that women and under-represented minorities are less likely to have taken a high school computer science course. Therefore, when these students with a wide range of prior experience start a first-year engineering course, many of them struggle. Traditional programming instruction requires students to learn programming syntax and logic simultaneously, which is particularly challenging for students with a less robust computer science and programming background. Separating these two components would reduce the cognitive load of the students, allowing them to focus on developing a single skill at a time.

One way to implement this separation of syntax and logic is through the use of Parsons Problems.  Parsons Problems are activities or assignments in which computer code is separated into individual lines or multi-line segments. These segments are then scrambled and are to be placed in order by the students. These problems have been shown to have similar efficacy in improving programming skills as writing the programs themselves. 

Parsons Problems have been implemented into a first-year engineering course that teaches introductory computer programming through MATLAB and C/++. The problems, first implemented in Autumn 2019, were designed to be completed in person in the classroom. The students were provided slips of paper and asked to rearrange them into the correct order. Previous student feedback provided some areas of improvement for the next iteration including looking at the length and difficulty of the problems. Also, the instructional approaches taken differed in the classroom. While these challenges were addressed, an additional challenge presented itself: the virtual class environment. All activities were forced to shift to a virtual environment due to the class becoming 100% online in AU 2020. Activities were converted and delivered via custom adaption of js-parsons, an online Parsons Problem JavaScript library. This still allowed the collaboration that made the previous iteration unique through the use of Zoom breakout rooms and screen sharing. The full paper will discuss the student feedback for this online version of the activity and compare that with the feedback that was obtained for the in-person activity in previous years. Additionally, the paper will highlight the plans for further research into the learning gains and the impact of activity formatting and mode of adoption has on the success of Parsons Problem and a learning tool.
AU  - Brooke Morin
AU  - Krista M. Kecskemety
CY  - Virtual Conference
DA  - 2021/07/26
PB  - ASEE Conferences
TI  - Collaborative Parsons Problems in a Remote-learning First-year Engineering Classroom
UR  - https://peer.asee.org/36809
DO  - 10.18260/1-2--36809
ER  -