An Assessment of the Effectiveness of Interactive Technology in an Introductory Programming Course for Non-Majors

Programming skills are in increasing demand in nearly all disciplines. To cater to this demand the Computer Sciences department, at our institution, offers programming courses tailored for non-majors. Historically, we have observed the highest drop rate in the introductory course even though most of the students have had some prior experience with computers. Course evaluations indicate that most of them feel that programming is a challenging intellectual exercise. To allay student concerns we decided to apply active learning techniques in the lectures as well as in the discussion sessions. We wanted to give students feedback on their understanding of the lecture material during the class period and thereby reinforce their learning process. We also wanted some insight on how well the lecture material was being assimilated. For these purposes, we used the classroom performance system (CPS), which is a software/hardware system that allowed us to pose multiple choice questions during lectures and receive responses from students through their hand held remote control pads. The system tallied and recorded the responses and displayed the results in histograms. The correct answer was highlighted for students to get immediate feedback on their performance compared to their peers. We measured the effectiveness of this approach through student surveys, student ratings, classroom observations, CPS results, and analyses of the students' performance on the final examination. Student experience was largely positive and most students reported that this active learning technique helped them understand new and difficult material. From the instructor's perspective this new approach provided us with a better gauge to student understanding and kept students engaged during the lectures