A Case Study in Constructivist Pedagogy in a Computer Organization Course

This Full Paper in the Research to Practice category presents an analysis of a constructivist pedagogical approach for the semester-long programming project in an Introduction to Computer Organization course at a liberal arts college in the Northeast United States. At this college, the Computer Science (CS) major has a relatively small number of required courses. In order to ensure that CS majors experience an appropriate breadth and depth in the field and because this course is required for all CS majors, the programming project was designed to meet and reinforce many of the learning outcomes for the major. After the end of the semester, a survey was administered to the students in order to obtain feedback about the usefulness of the programming project in the context of the course, and in the context of the CS major. The methods discussed in this paper are directly useful to other departments that have a small number of required courses. Additionally, these methods could be utilized by larger departments that wish to provide a reinforcement of concepts across multiple courses.