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Using collaboration to overcome disparities in Java experience

Published: 09 September 2012 Publication History

Abstract

The lower-division CS curriculum at the University of California, Berkeley includes a version of CS 2 that is intended to introduce students to Java as well as data structures and programming methodology. Some students in the course already have Java experience. In one course offering, students without previous Java experience received final grades that were 0.27 standard deviations below their peers who already had some Java experience (d=0.27, p<0.05). In a subsequent offering, the instructor adopted course policies and teaching strategies that made student collaboration more frequent in hopes that students without Java experience could learn from their peers with Java experience. In this highly-collaborative offering, there were no statistically significant differences in average final grades between students with and without Java experience (d=0.12, p<0.1). A smaller percentage of students dropped the highly-collaborative offering than the less-collaborative offering. This decrease in attrition was most notable for female students, from 37 percent to 5 percent.

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  • (2022)Exploring Group Dynamics in a Group-Structured Computing Undergraduate Research ExperienceProceedings of the 2022 ACM Conference on International Computing Education Research - Volume 110.1145/3501385.3543959(135-148)Online publication date: 3-Aug-2022
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      cover image ACM Conferences
      ICER '12: Proceedings of the ninth annual international conference on International computing education research
      September 2012
      174 pages
      ISBN:9781450316040
      DOI:10.1145/2361276
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      Published: 09 September 2012

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      Author Tags

      1. attrition
      2. collaboration
      3. competition
      4. cs 2
      5. gender
      6. group work
      7. lab-centric instruction
      8. pair programming
      9. programming experience
      10. satisfaction

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      September 9 - 11, 2012
      Auckland, New Zealand

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      Overall Acceptance Rate 189 of 803 submissions, 24%

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      • (2022)Empirical research on pair programming in higher education: a literature reviewComputer Science Education10.1080/08993408.2022.203950433:3(400-428)Online publication date: 6-Mar-2022
      • (2021)Evidence for Teaching Practices that Broaden Participation for Women in ComputingProceedings of the 2021 Working Group Reports on Innovation and Technology in Computer Science Education10.1145/3502870.3506568(57-131)Online publication date: 28-Dec-2021
      • (2020)Collaborative Learning in Computing EducationProceedings of the 2020 ACM Conference on International Computing Education Research10.1145/3372782.3406254(136-146)Online publication date: 10-Aug-2020
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      • (2019)Equity and DiversityThe Cambridge Handbook of Computing Education Research10.1017/9781108654555.017(481-510)Online publication date: 15-Feb-2019
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      • (2018)Leveraging Visual Programming Language and Collaborative Learning to Broaden Participation in Computer ScienceProceedings of the 19th Annual SIG Conference on Information Technology Education10.1145/3241815.3242586(172-177)Online publication date: 14-Sep-2018
      • (2018)Self-Efficacy, Cognitive Load, and Emotional Reactions in Collaborative Algorithms Labs - A Case StudyProceedings of the 2018 ACM Conference on International Computing Education Research10.1145/3230977.3230980(1-10)Online publication date: 8-Aug-2018
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