Course Redesign ePortfolio Showcase

Learning how to program a computer is of increasing importance to students from many majors, but it is an intellectually demanding activity. San Jose State University has limited capacity in offering the "Introduction to Programming" course on campus and is unable to keep up with demand. After a largely successful experiment of offering the course as a MOOC through Udacity in Summer 2013, we are offering it as a "SPOC" (small private online course) in Spring 2014. We are adding more practice and interaction to the online course, aiming for having parity in pass rates and student success between the online and regular offering.

The COMP 110: Introduction to Programming and Algorithms course redesign involves the gathering and development of online web-based study materials for use by students to review fundamental programming concepts. Additionally, it involves the usage of the YouSpeak mobile and web-based classroom participation tool in class. YouSpeak provides students with an alternative/additional channel to participate in class. The software, developed at CSUN, allows students who may (on occasion or consistently) be too shy to speak out load an alternative. Students can ask questions or make comments by writing out their questions through the YouSpeak system on their smart phones or laptops. The questions then appear projected on the screen alongside the lecture material for all to see.

We are using an online MOOC from Coursera for the course content. We spend the class time doing exercises and examples. The class meets twice a week. Each class has two quizzes, one at the beginning and one at the end.

CIS405 Database Design and Development is a lecture core for computer information system majors in the computerized classroom. Traditionally the course was taught with database topics with Oracle. The goals of the project are to add data warehouses with SAP ERP business warehouse (BW) in the course. For the redesign project, the lecture is offered face-to-face, but all the course materials will be online for the flipped classroom and remedial purposes. Moodle is used as course platform: (1) to communicate instructions for class activities, including course slides, in-class active learning exercises, and solutions to them (2) to download Oracle and SAP vendors' course activity materials (3) to display student performance progress in the gradebook (4) to submit all assignments and projects prompt feedback online and (5) to host online quizzes and exams. Adding data warehouse and SAP ERP BW to the last three weeks in the quarter makes this technical course very intensive, but students feel they have learned tremendous new knowledge and skills which can get them prepared for their future IT job market.

The objective of this proposal is to redesign the SAS programing course including two arms: (1) Develop a hybrid model of instruction in which core SAS programming skills lectures is provided online. (2) Emphasize program debugging and problem solving skills. The hybrid format allows an increased enrollment that is limited to a computer lab's seat capacity and allows students to learn the computing skills with a pace they are comfortable.

Redesign MIS 123 Computer Literacy online learning method from a student-pulled online learning approach to a hybrid-blended online learning approach. The purpose of the project is to implement some teaching policies and learning rules for stimulating students learning process and increasing the passing rate for the course.

CS122 is a freshment database class which includes a lecture session and a lab session. To engage students and to improve students' learning, the class is flipped. Students watch pre-recorded videos to get course content before they go to class. In the lecture session, students work in groups on lab projects and get support from the instructor and TAs. In the lab session, students work alone on the assignements first and take quizzes at the end. To prevent cheating, individualized questions are used in the quizzes.

This project is to adopt some pedagogical strategies to redesign CSC 138, Computer Networks and Internet, which is a core course in computer science. The purpose is to enhance the teaching of this course pedagogically, with emphasis on the network hands-on experience. The redesign motivation, rationales and plan are provided in details below.

In this project, I redesigned CSC 133 using mobile application development framework to improve students' motivation and success. CSC 133 is a high-demand, low-success, required course and we are in need of new pedagogical approaches for increasing students' engagement in course topics. Previous research shows that students are more motivated when course content relates to their interests. Our students have a natural curiosity towards mobile technology and eager to develop skills in this area to find better jobs. Drawing on these motives, this project aims to increase student's success in CSC 133 by utilizing mobile technology as a tool for teaching course topics and allowing students to solve their assignments using this emerging technology

This is an upper division undergraduate required course. This course traditionally caps 35 students per section during each term, where approximately 6 of the students receive grades of C or below or withdraw, and the DFW rate is usually higher than 10%. This project is to adopt the pedagogical strategies for course redesign: Flipped Classroom and Adaptive Learning. By flipping the classroom, providing supplemental instruction, and organizing team-based learning, we expect that students will achieve fundamental programming skills and improve problem solving abilities, which is essential for them to succeed in their future career.

Redesign the course to implement additional resources in class and online along with redesigned assignments to assist students in mastering difficult concepts in basic networking technologies and network management. Developing various group activities to solve technology problems in class in order to improve student engagement will be the foundation for the course redesign. By having students work together, I hope to improve student success in understanding the concepts and achieving a better passing rate.

Computer Science 40 is currently our gateway course to computer science, and computational thinking. Unfortunately, it has also been one with a historically low student success. In Fall '16 we are moving CSci 40 into the DISCOVERe tablet program to make the technology needed to learn to code more readily available to all students. This project facilitates the changes needed to the course to take full advantage from knowing students will have devices for coding in every class. Developing class coding activities and quizzes, along with peer reviewed coding activities will greatly enhance student engagement and enable improved learning outcomes. Data will be collected from this offering, and used to guide further enhancements.

This is the first required course for Computer Science majors. It is also a required course for some other majors. Right now about a third of the class receives a repeatable grade. I want to reduce that percentage. Most students come with no experience. The concepts are foreign to them and many have trouble grasping the basic concepts. This is a big issue, and we need to find a way to improve their understanding. I will address these problems with a multi-prong approach. I will use an interactive textbook, a flipped classroom, Supplemental Instruction, and in-class activities with clicker questions. Students will do the reading and complete online quizzes before class begins.

This course is a required course for Mechanical Engineering majors and a prerequisite to other upper division courses. Most of the students entering this course have had traditional mathematics and physics courses, but this is their first exposure to computer science and programming. Programming is very parallel to learning a new language and many students find a traditional lecture format inadequate to convey the necessary information to meet the learning objectives. Incorporating interactive activities in which the students receive guidance from peers, Supplemental Instructor's (SI's), and the course instructor will hopefully strengthen their confidence and improve their performance.

Adapt the following instructional strategies: 1) Flipping the Classroom using Project-based Learning; 2) Strengthening Student Achievement in Mathematics Using Supplemental Instruction Materials; and, 3) Peer Led Pair Programming in Closed Laboratory (PLPPCL).

In addition, the faculty will create a workbook as laboratory learning material for PLPPCL to enhance the introductory computer science curriculum. PLPPCL is a new strategy and utilizes collaborative learning strategies to retain under-prepared students in the undergraduate computer science program. By flipping the classroom, providing supplemental instruction materials, and organizing team learning (pair-programming), we expect students will master various programming skills and improve their abilities for computational problem solving, as well as, be well prepared to succeed in other computer science courses related to programming. Through the application of flipped classroom, supplemental instruction, and project-based learning strategies as well as peer led pair programming labs and class discussions, this course redesign will emphasize the development of the logic programming skills, object-oriented techniques, and analytical abilities necessary to specify, design, and develop computer-based solutions to complex problems.

The purpose of redesigning the course with adopting simulator is, closing the gaps between high-level language construction and low level assembly programming by using a visualization model. Also adopting these simulators produces a fun and interesting environment to motivate students to want to learn the course subjects.

Improve the effectiveness of current active learning strategies and practices; develop augmented supplemental materials for self-study in Blackboard with instantaneous feedback to student; implement blended/hybrid classroom approach; develop remediation activities for underprepared students; and, early identification and intervention for students that are not adequately engaging in the course.

The primary goal for this course redesign is to create a new mechanism to achieve more comfortable and active learning opportunities for the diverse population of students. This will increase their comprehension of the material during the class time and ease their self-study time at home.

Learning to program occurs as the student makes small changes to her program and checks its outcome. Providing feedback during this process is critical. Did the change help the student towards a correct solution? Currently, an instructor sets a programming problem for the student to solve and then, most of the feedback is provided after the student turns in the work for grading. This limits the amount of feedback a student receives to at most once a week; and more importantly, there is no feedback during the hands on process of writing the computer program. The course redesign is to incorporate an online software tool for programming assignments that can provide students with feedback as they incrementally develop their answers.

CSC 134 is an upper-division course in Department of Computer Science, which is a pre-requisite course for other advanced courses. This course forms as an important foundation to better understand other major areas of computer science. The course typically has 30-45 students in each section and the D/F/W rate is usually high. Due to the large amount of course content to be delivered, the most used instruction model is traditional lecture, which has low student engagement. This project is initiated to explore strategies and techniques that improve student engagement and enhance student learning in database, such as online videos, flipped classroom on specific topics, and team-based learning. This will help student form a stronger foundation for future computer science study.

IST 274 is required lower-level core class for the B.S. in IST degree program experiencing high DWF rates and bottleneck problems. This project attempts to solve both problems though a complete redesign by flipping the classroom and providing an immersive student guided lab experience.

The high-level goals of this re-design are to: i) adjust course pace to promote students to develop a stable work routine throughout the semester, by reorganizing course topics and emphasis; ii) develop pre-assessments allowing students to self-check their understanding of assigned readings before coming to class; (iii) redesign and implement select lessons using an active learning strategy, POGIL.

The high-level goals of our re-design are to: (i) promote development of a growth mindset and help students become organized, self-directed learners more capable of managing the current, heavy course workload; (ii) develop new, supplemental materials for students to self-check their understanding of material and self-check assigned work before submission; and (iii) integrate more and effective active learning strategies in class.