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Scaffolding a Team-based Active Learning Course to Engage Students: A Multidimensional Approach

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Conference

2020 ASEE Virtual Annual Conference Content Access

Location

Virtual On line

Publication Date

June 22, 2020

Start Date

June 22, 2020

End Date

June 26, 2021

Conference Session

Collaboration and Communication in Problem-based Learning

Tagged Division

Educational Research and Methods

Page Count

20

DOI

10.18260/1-2--35174

Permanent URL

https://peer.asee.org/35174

Download Count

1266

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Paper Authors

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Mohsen M. Dorodchi University of North Carolina at Charlotte

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Dr. Dorodchi has been teaching in the field of computing for over 30 years of which 20 years as educator. He has taught majority of the courses in the computer science and engineering curriculum over the past 20 years such as introductory programming, data structures, databases, software engineering, system programming, etc.
He has been actively involved in computer science education research and has a number of publications and active NSF grants in this field including learning and predictive analytics for student success, S-Stem NSF grant, Research Practitioner Partnership NSF grant, and Spatial Reasoning Impact Study in CS1.

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Nasrin Dehbozorgi University of North Carolina at Charlotte

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Researcher and Ph.D. candidate in the department of Computer Science at University of North Carolina at Charlotte. Conducting research in the area of CSE by applying AI/NLP to do learning analytics, developing models to operationalize attitude in collaborative conversations and pedagogical design patterns.

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Aileen Benedict University of North Carolina at Charlotte

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Aileen Benedict is a Ph.D. student and GAANN Fellow at UNC Charlotte, who has been mentored in teaching since 2016. Her work mainly focuses on CS education and learning analytics, with specific interests in reflective practices and predictive analytics. More recently, she has also been learning more about various topics in machine learning, recommender systems, and mental health.

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Erfan Al-Hossami University of North Carolina at Charlotte

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Erfan Al-Hossami is a Ph.D. student at UNC Charlotte. Erfan has been mentored in teaching CS1 since 2016 and then in CS education research. His work mainly focuses on predictive learning analytics. His research interests include Machine Learning, NLP, and Conversational A.I. and mental health. Recently, he's been learning more about code generation, transfer learning, and text classification.

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Alexandria Benedict University of North Carolina at Charlotte

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Alexandria Benedict is an undergraduate student at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte pursuing her Bachelor of Science in Computer Science. She is a recipient of the STARS Scholarship, and is a research assistant under the RPP STEM Ecosystem Project which helps study the effects of computational thinking inside classrooms. Furthermore, she has been a teaching assistant under Dr. Mohsen Dorodchi for the Introductory Computer Science course at UNCC for the past 2 years.

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Abstract

In this evidence-based practice paper, we present our experiences with different scaffolding techniques to improve student engagement in active learning classes. Scaffolding of course content enables learners to achieve the expected course learning outcomes smoothly from lower to higher challenge levels. Also, in active learning classes with an emphasis on group activities, the activities can be scaffolded in different ways to promote a higher level of engagement and provide more diversity in students' learning process. Since students in large activity-based active learning classes (ABAL) complete the assigned activities at different times and in different places, the collaborative work may not become as effective anymore. This phenomenon of falling behind in collaborative learning and team-based activities are observable through late and missing submissions, in which, both are consequential to student performance. In this paper, we present our Introductory Computer Science (CS1) course model, particularly highlighting the process of group work and collaborative learning. Next, we introduce a novel multidimensional scaffolding methodology focused on the following dimensions: (1) chunking by difficulty, (2) chunking by time, (3) chunking by focus, and (4) chunking by collaboration. This approach focuses on refining instructor-to-student mediums through diversifying activities, balancing the challenge levels, including pre-class and post-class assignments, and chunking instruction time. Our approach rethinks scaffolding by incorporating the teaching strategy of think-pair-share as a scaffolding technique to guide learners through student-to-student learning mediums as well. To assess the effectiveness of our approach, we report on various student engagement metrics, including on-time, late, and missing submissions. Our multi-semester findings indicate a significant increase in student on-time submissions and a substantial decrease in overall missing submissions.

Dorodchi, M. M., & Dehbozorgi, N., & Benedict, A., & Al-Hossami, E., & Benedict, A. (2020, June), Scaffolding a Team-based Active Learning Course to Engage Students: A Multidimensional Approach Paper presented at 2020 ASEE Virtual Annual Conference Content Access, Virtual On line . 10.18260/1-2--35174

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