The need for better software and systems to support active CS learning

I believe strongly in active learning, such as Peer Instruction (as I have argued here and here).  I have discovered that it is far harder than I thought to do for large CS classes.

I decided to use clickers in CS1315 this semester (n=217), rather than use the colored index cards that I’ve used in the past for Peer Instruction (see blog post here). With cards, I can only take a vote — no histogram of results, and I can’t provide any grade value for the participation. With clickers, I can use the evidence-based practice as developed by Eric Mazur, Cynthia Lee, Beth Simon, Leo Porter, et al. (plugging the Peer Instruction for CS website):

• Ask everyone to answer to prime their thinking about the question,
• ask students to discuss the question in groups of 2-3,
• then vote again (consensus within groups), and
• show the results and discuss the misconceptions.

To make it worthwhile, I’m giving 10 points of final course grade for scoring over 50% on the second question (only — first one is just to get predictions and activate knowledge), 5 points for scoring over 30%.

I’m trying to do this all with campus-approved standards: TurningPoint clickers, TurningPoint software.  I’d love to use an app-based solution, but our campus Office of Information Technologies warns against it.  They can’t guarantee that, in large classes, the network will support all the traffic for everyone to vote at once.

The process is so complicated: Turn on clickers in our learning management software (a form of Sakai called T-Square), download the participant list, open up ResponseWare and define a session (for those using the app version), plug in receiver. After class, save the session, integrate the session with the participant list, then integrate the results with T-Square for grades. The default question-creation process in TurningPoint software automatically shows results and demands a specific format (e.g., which makes it hard to show screenshots as part of a question), so I’m using “Poll Anywhere” option, which requires me to process the session file after class to delete the first question (where everyone votes to prime their thinking) and to define the correct response(s) for each question.

I’m willing to do all that. But it’s more complicated than that.

Turns out that Georgia Tech hasn’t upgraded to the latest version of the TurningPoint software (TurningPoint Cloud).  GT only supports TurningPoint 5. TurningPoint stopped distributing that version of the software in May 2016, so you have to get it directly from the on-campus Center for Teaching and Learning. I got the software and installed it — and discovered that it doesn’t run on the current version of MacOS, Sierra.

I did find a solution. Here’s what I do.  Before each lecture, I move my lecture slides to a network drive.  When I get to class, I load my lecture on the lecture/podium computer (which runs Windows and TurningPoint 5 and has a receiver built-in).  I gather all the session data while I teach with the podium computer and do live coding on my computer (two screens in the massive lecture hall).  I save the session data back to the network drive.  Back in my office, I use an older Mac that still runs an older version of MacOS to download the session data, import it using TurningPoint 5, do all the deletions of priming questions and correct-marking of other questions, then integrate and upload to T-Square.

Counting my laptop where I make up slides and do live coding, my Peer Instruction classes require three computers.

Every CS teacher should use active learning methodologies in our classes.  Our classes are huge.  We need better and easier mechanisms to make this work.