Instructors in computer science (CS) often adopt mathematical abstractions and entities when explaining concepts. As the academic preparation of learners has become more diverse, the low retention rate of students in CS has been identified as a vital issue. To make CS education accessible to students with less academic preparation or less experience with abstract or mathematical topics, educators have attempted to make computing tangible by using analogies. In this project, we adopted physical analogues and extended it by incorporating storytelling by converting physical objects into characters and adding narratives.
Outcomes
In this project, we created video materials for two courses (3.75 hours total, described below) and designed assessments aligned with the video content. The materials have been deployed in real courses and will continue to be used. In addition, we assessed the effectiveness of the videos using A/B testing, resulting in a published journal article, two conference presentations, and two papers in progress. The research effort has involved training of 32 undergraduate and graduate researchers.
Content Development
We developed a set of traditional videos, a set of physical analogue videos, and a set of storytelling videos for 4 modules in CSC263 Data Structure and Analysis. Below are links to the playlists of videos on YouTube.
CSC263 Module 1 Videos on Best Case, Worst Case, and Average Case
o Traditional Videos
o Physical Analogue Videos
o Storytelling Videos
CSC263 Module 2 Videos on Amortized Analysis
o Traditional
o Physical Analogue
o Storytelling
CSC263 Module 3 Videos on BFS and DFS
o Traditional
o Physical Analogue
o Storytelling
CSC263 Module 4 Videos on Disjoint Set
o Traditional
o Physical Analogue
o Storytelling
We also developed a set of storytelling videos for two different topics to pair with existing traditional videos in CSC108 Introduction to Programming. Below are the storytelling videos created for the topics on Loop and Sorting Algorithms.
o Week 4 For Loop Video 1
o Week 4 For Loop Video 2
o Week 4 For Loop Video 3
o Week 5 While Loop Video 1
o Week 5 While Loop Video 2
o Week 5 While Loop Video 3
o Week 10 Bubble Sort
o Week 10 Insertion Sort
o Week 10 Selection Sort