Allen, J. M., & Downey, K., & Miller, K., & Edgcomb, A. D., & Vahid, F. (2019, June), Many Small Programs in CS1: Usage Analysis from  Multiple Universities  Paper presented at 2019 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition , Tampa, Florida. 10.18260/1-2--33084

\bibitem{asee_peer_33084}
  Allen, J. M., \& Downey, K., \& Miller, K., \& Edgcomb, A. D., \& Vahid, F. (2019, June), \emph{Many Small Programs in CS1: Usage Analysis from  Multiple Universities}
  Paper presented at 2019 ASEE Annual Conference \& Exposition , Tampa, Florida.
  10.18260/1-2--33084

Joe Michael Allen, Kelly Downey, Kris Miller, Alex Daniel Edgcomb, and Frank Vahid.  "Many Small Programs in CS1: Usage Analysis from  Multiple Universities".  2019 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition , Tampa, Florida, 2019, June.  ASEE Conferences, 2019.  https://peer.asee.org/33084 Internet.  28 Jan, 2025

\bibitem{asee_peer_33084}
  Joe Michael Allen, Kelly Downey, Kris Miller, Alex Daniel Edgcomb, and Frank Vahid.
  "Many Small Programs in CS1: Usage Analysis from  Multiple Universities".
  \emph{2019 ASEE Annual Conference \& Exposition , Tampa, Florida, 2019, June}.
  ASEE Conferences, 2019.
  https://peer.asee.org/33084 Internet.  28 Jan, 2025

@INPROCEEDINGS{asee_peer_33084
author = "Joe Michael Allen, Kelly Downey, Kris Miller, Alex Daniel Edgcomb, and Frank Vahid"
title = "Many Small Programs in CS1: Usage Analysis from  Multiple Universities"
booktitle = "2019 ASEE Annual Conference \& Exposition "
year = "2019"
month = "June"
address = "Tampa, Florida"
publisher = "ASEE Conferences"
note = {https://peer.asee.org/33084}
number = {10.18260/1-2--33084}
}

TY  - CPAPER
AB  - In 2017, we introduced a teaching method called many small programs (MSPs) in the CS1 courses at our university. Instead of teaching via one large programming assignment (OLP) each week, MSPs allow the instructor to assign multiple programming assignments, for example 5 or more, each week instead. Our previous studies have shown that MSPs can improve the student experience by reducing stress and increasing student satisfaction in the course. Furthermore, MSPs have been shown to improve student grade performance in CS1, especially on the coding portion of exams. In a follow-up study, we gained insight on how students were using MSPs, and learned that students use MSPs in ways beneficial to their learning. Students spend sufficient time working on MSPs each week, start working on MSPs earlier, complete more MSPs than required (given a weekly full-credit threshold), take advantage of pivoting (switch to another program if stuck on the current one), and use MSPs more to study for exams. We have shared these findings with universities around the nation; causing other universities to switch from teaching CS1 with OLPs to MSPs. Given data on student MSP submissions from other schools, we extend our work to include MSPs taught at other universities. We perform similar analysis and found that students being taught via MSPs from other universities also use MSPs in beneficial ways. Students spend sufficient time working on MSPs each week, they start working on MSPs early, and they complete a majority of assigned MSPs each week.
AU  - Joe Michael Allen
AU  - Kelly Downey
AU  - Kris Miller
AU  - Alex Daniel Edgcomb
AU  - Frank Vahid
CY  - Tampa, Florida
DA  - 2019/06/15
PB  - ASEE Conferences
TI  - Many Small Programs in CS1: Usage Analysis from  Multiple Universities
UR  - https://peer.asee.org/33084
DO  - 10.18260/1-2--33084
ER  -