Edgcomb, A. D., & Vahid, F. (2016, June), Simplifying a Course to Reduce Student Stress so Students Can Focus Again on Learning  Paper presented at 2016 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition, New Orleans, Louisiana. 10.18260/p.26188

\bibitem{asee_peer_26188}
  Edgcomb, A. D., \& Vahid, F. (2016, June), \emph{Simplifying a Course to Reduce Student Stress so Students Can Focus Again on Learning}
  Paper presented at 2016 ASEE Annual Conference \& Exposition, New Orleans, Louisiana.
  10.18260/p.26188

Alex Daniel Edgcomb and Frank Vahid.  "Simplifying a Course to Reduce Student Stress so Students Can Focus Again on Learning".  2016 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition, New Orleans, Louisiana, 2016, June.  ASEE Conferences, 2016.  https://peer.asee.org/26188 Internet.  30 Mar, 2025

\bibitem{asee_peer_26188}
  Alex Daniel Edgcomb and Frank Vahid.
  "Simplifying a Course to Reduce Student Stress so Students Can Focus Again on Learning".
  \emph{2016 ASEE Annual Conference \& Exposition, New Orleans, Louisiana, 2016, June}.
  ASEE Conferences, 2016.
  https://peer.asee.org/26188 Internet.  30 Mar, 2025

@INPROCEEDINGS{asee_peer_26188
author = "Alex Daniel Edgcomb and Frank Vahid"
title = "Simplifying a Course to Reduce Student Stress so Students Can Focus Again on Learning"
booktitle = "2016 ASEE Annual Conference \& Exposition"
year = "2016"
month = "June"
address = "New Orleans, Louisiana"
publisher = "ASEE Conferences"
note = {https://peer.asee.org/26188}
number = {10.18260/p.26188}
}

TY  - CPAPER
AB  - The integration of digital and Internet resources has led to class resource clutter: online announcements, discussion boards, posted slides and additional readings, Google docs folders, online textbooks, online homework systems with separate subscription and login, class calendars, posted solutions, lengthened syllabi, surveys, clickers, lecture videos, and more.

Students struggle to find and focus on the core academic content through the clutter. As one student said, "I have to open 10 tabs every day for this class." Students are distracted by the time needed to install and learn how to use each class resource. Beyond the time and technical barriers, such context switches impose significant cognitive load that detracts from core learning.

We conducted a cross-semester study to determine whether aggressively focusing a class' resources can improve student performance. We note that the focus of this paper is in simplifying the class resource structure, rather than modifying the underlying academic content.

The study observed a total of four courses with a total of 528 students. The first study considered two offerings of the same course (an online CS1 Introduction to C++), with the same content coverage and university. The first course offering contained traditional resources, while the second course aggressively simplified and focused class resources. The same study was again conducted for two in-person CS1 offerings: One offering with traditional resources; a second with simplified class resources. The participants were blind to the conditions of the study.

We surveyed the students to measure stress with agreeability questions on a 6-points scale (6 = Strongly agree, 0 = Strongly disagree). We found that students preferred the focused resources, enjoying the class more and experiencing less stress, than students in a class with traditional resources. Students with the focused resources reported a 4.9 of 6.0 for enjoying the class, which was significantly higher (p-value < 0.001) than students with the traditional resources reporting 4.1 of 6.0.

Further, this paper includes concrete suggestions for focusing class resources, including a curated list of suggestions from a few dozen instructors and course designers, and a step-by-step process.
AU  - Alex Daniel Edgcomb
AU  - Frank Vahid
CY  - New Orleans, Louisiana
DA  - 2016/06/26
PB  - ASEE Conferences
TI  - Simplifying a Course to Reduce Student Stress so Students Can Focus Again on Learning
UR  - https://peer.asee.org/26188
DO  - 10.18260/p.26188
ER  -