Exercise on Question Design
Scenario
Introductory programming instructors would like to know what modes of instruction students perceive as the most beneficial to them. Below are some candidate modes of instruction:
- Instructor-led live coding in front of the class
- Instructor-led explanation of worked examples of code
- Pair programming (students work in pairs) on a coding task
- Interactive live coding (allows time for students to complete segments started by instructor
- Instructor-led presentation of programming approaches without code
- Student-paired discussions of programming approach without code
- Predict-the-output code-tracing exercises
- Code-fixing exercise
Instructors would also like to know if the perceived value differs by student experience or level of confidence.
Discussion questions
- What are approaches for asking students to rate learning value?
- How should questions be grouped or ordered?
- How does the survey acquire student experience or confidence?
- Should modes of instruction be presented multiple times in different ways?
- What are potential problems or tradeoffs with the approaches we discussed?