Using Student Developed Narratives to Improve Learning and Engagement in Computer Problem Solving Courses
In our Computer Systems major, we require all students to take a problem solving course (PS) to prepare them for subsequent courses in computer programming. As part of the PS course, students use flowchart interpreters to learn basic procedural programming concepts. Students often have difficulty translating word problems into flowcharts because they do not have a good understanding of the problem's domain. To write an effective computer program to solve a problem, programmers must first understand the problem. 1,6,14,15 Thus, the student's inability to conceive of the problem intellectually may prevent them from creating an effective solution. The goal of our project was to create narratives (case studies) that students could understand, relate to, and be engaged with, so they can be used as the contexts to learn problem solving and procedural programming skills in the flowcharting component of the PS course. Since students know what is relevant to them, we selected a group of five students majoring in Computer Systems to help us develop those narratives. The use of student developed narratives affected performance in different flowcharting structures (sequence, selection, repetition) differently. Overall, the data suggests that the use of case studies was beneficial for increasing performance in flowcharting assessments using selection structures, modestly beneficial in assessments using repetition structures, and of no benefit in assessments using just sequence. Despite the learning benefit, a majority of students and instructors were resistant to using case studies in this course and thought that reading stories does not belong in a problem solving/computer programming course. Therefore, novel approaches to engage students and instructors in interdisciplinary thinking and practice are necessary. 1. Student Stories as Contexts for Problem Solving and Computer Programming Courses The PS course is required for all Computer Systems first year majors, but it is also taken by students with other majors. In the first part of the PS course, students learn basic procedural programming concepts, like input, sequencing, selection (if/else) repetition, and output using flowchart interpreters, like Visual Logic (www.visuallogic.org) When solving flowcharting problems, students have difficulty translating word problems into computer algorithms. Moreover, most problems proposed to students are closely related to mathematics and accounting, and our students are not well prepared in mathematics. Students are neither interested nor engaged by the flowcharting problems. Understanding and engaging the problem domain to be solved by implementing a computer program should be a prerequisite for writing the computer program itself. Therefore, the students' inability to create a mental model of a given problem domain hinders their ability to develop problem solving skills and write computer programs. In the second part of the PS course, students use Alice, a three dimensional animation software environment (www.alice.org) to create interactive animations, in order to further develop and reinforce their problem solving and procedural programming skills as well as to introduce object oriented programming concepts and skills. We have shown that, when students develop engaging narratives which they can then implement as a computer program using Alice, their success in the PS course improves. 2,3,10,11,12,13 However, an important difference between the earlier part of the course and the later part is that, in the flowcharting component, instructors generally pose the problems that the students will solve to develop their problem solving skills. That is not the case in the Alice component of the course because students create their own stories (i.e. their own problems) that they then solve by implementing a video game prototype. Here, we describe a solution to the problem of student engagement by creating problem domains that students could understand, relate to and be engaged with, so they can be used as the contexts to develop problem solving and procedural programming skills in the flowcharting component of the PS course. Our approach is based on the premise that students themselves know better which problems are relevant to them, which problems they can relate to and understand. In fall 2014, we selected a group of five students, majoring in Computer Systems, and who passed the PS course within the last three years, to develop stories that could be used as context to solve flowcharting problems. Those five students took a section of the PS course that was linked to a learning community (LC) so, in addition to understanding well the course in which the stories were going to be used, they had considerable narrative and writing skills. The students themselves suggested which flowcharting assignments could be assigned with the stories. The stories were developed iteratively, following a combination of individual writing, group discussion, and faculty suggestions, to further improve the versions of the stories. Students were provided with a small stipend. The five stories developed by the former LC PS students (3 male and 2 female) range in length from 1,200 2,600 words, and have different themes. The themes reveal what is important, interesting, and engaging to our students. One story is a fantasy (Shell Sleuth) another is science fiction (Mind Games) and the other three are New York City stories imbued with magic realism (Belvedere, Movement in Green, and The Shadows of Invisibility) 9 Here are the plots of their stories: Shell Sleuth This story takes place in a fantasy world during a war between Elves and Orcs. The protagonist is an Elven spy named Zerk who must calculate the size of the enemy army. To do this, he has disguised himself to sneak aboard one of the enemy creature ships. He is on his way to an outpost to which all the forces are heading for a celebration. Once there, he will be able to calculate the size of the enemy forces by counting the ships at the post. Mind Games What happens when you create a machine with artificial intelligence? A better future or total annihilation? Well, the genius Professor Harry Odum didn't think much of his invention ARIIA. He also did not think much of placing ARIIA at the helm of the United States nuclear missiles. When the professor's son, Michael, comes to visit the Arizona military base, ARIIA begins to act strangely. Michael initiates a game with ARIIA with all of the military's nuclear missiles as the prize for the winner and total destruction for the loser. Join Michael as he becomes entwined in a game of machine versus human with a machine that knows a little too much about Michael. Belvedere Isaiah Jones is experiencing the American dream, but not one filled with glamour, expensive cars, and a college education. Isaiah is experiencing the "other" American dream, days of repetitive and monotonous work, no college degree, and no money. "Having no luck" cannot even begin to describe Isaiah's life, but he is not a lost cause because he possesses an impressive witty brain. When hope seems lost and there seems to be no chance of a better life, James Hensen, a rich entrepreneur, offers an opportunity to the young man in the form of delivering packages for large sums of money. However, James does not seem to be the entrepreneur he presents himself to be; rather, Isaiah grows suspicious when James asks him to meet at Belvedere Castle in Central Park. Isaiah, presented with the quandary of delivering the packages or not, begins to weigh his options. What will he choose to do? Movement in Green Ivory Nyr, an ordinary college girl, discovers only three nights before New Year's Eve that a mysterious, invisible, omnipotent force named Magister has been watching her. After Ivory completes a Good Samaritan deed, Magister assumes human form to speak with her directly on an empty, speeding train that seems to never reach its destination. Here, the entity reveals Ivory has already participated in three challenges as part of his "game" and informs her that, with each challenge, a life is saved. Ivory has a mere 72 hours to complete the remaining challenges. If she fails to fulfill them before the New Year arrives, or if she declines the offer, the lives at stake will be lost including her own. The Shadow of Invisibility Samantha, a first year college student, starts as an ordinary girl who often feels unnoticed. Her day begins with its usual boring pattern, but something about this day feels strange. She senses some mysterious dark figures are following her. On her way home, several of them confront her and reveal themselves to be an underground family. They tell Samantha she has the power of invisibility and ask her to join them. Although she declines, her life is forever changed. She becomes extremely sneaky and devious towards the people around her. Ultimately, Samantha's life is forever changed. 2. Implementation of the Case Studies To implement the case studies, we conducted a workshop with five instructors who would teach the PS course both in Fall 2014 and Spring 2015 to share suggestions on how to incorporate those stories in the curriculum. The stories were used as the context to create flowcharting assignments, some suggested by the students who wrote the case studies and others by the instructors, for in class or outside class assignments, with students preferably working in teams. To quantify the effect of the case studies on student's ability to solve problems algorithmically using flowcharts, all instructors agreed on a set of 10 common questions involving sequencing, selection (if/else) and repetition loops (see Appendix 1) In Fall 2014, the 10 common questions were used to evaluate the baseline (or control) student performance (n=182) In Spring 2015, we piloted Shell Sleuth, Mind Games, and Belvedere (see Appendix 2) with 202 students in 9 PS course sections; to evaluate the