Come to my workshop on CS Education at ASEE June 16!

I am attending my first American Society for Engineering Education (ASEE) Conference this year — see the website here: https://www.asee.org/conferences-and-events/conferences/annual-conference/2019.

I’m still figuring out Engineering Education Research, so I’ll be offering a workshop based on our work at Georgia Tech: Techniques for Improved Engagement and Learning of Programming. The workshop is Sunday, June 16, 2019 from 9:00 am to noon. Please come, and please pass this on to others you know who are attending ASEE and might be interested.

Computing education research at Georgia Tech over the last 15 years has led to techniques for teaching programming which improve student learning. Learning is enhanced through greater engagement and reduced cognitive load.

These techniques are:

• Media computation: Teaching programming through manipulation of digital media which improves students’ sense of utility and relevance leading to greater engagement;
• Worked examples: Using worked examples in peer instruction and for prompting for predictions that improve learning;
• Subgoal labeling: Structuring and labeling worked examples to improve immediate learning, retention over time, and transfer to new problems.

The learning objectives for this workshop are for participants to experience these techniques so that they might be able to judge which are most useful for their own practice. Participants will:

• Manipulate digital media with programs that they write during the workshop (laptops required).
• Participate in peer instruction questions using worked examples.
• Compare worked examples with and without subgoal labeling.