5322 Views (as of 05/2023)
  1. Clif Kussmaul
  2. http://kussmaul.org
  3. Principal Consultant
  4. Presenter’s NSFRESOURCECENTERS
  5. Green Mango Associates, Westminster College
  1. Helen Hu
  2. http://people.westminstercollege.edu/faculty/hhu/
  3. Professor
  4. Presenter’s NSFRESOURCECENTERS
  5. Westminster College
  1. Chris Mayfield
  2. https://w3.cs.jmu.edu/mayfiecs/
  3. Associate Professor
  4. Presenter’s NSFRESOURCECENTERS
  5. James Madison University
  1. Aman Yadav
  2. http://www.amanyadav.org
  3. Professor
  4. Presenter’s NSFRESOURCECENTERS
  5. Michigan State University

IntroCS POGIL

NSF Awards: 1626765

2019 (see original presentation & discussion)

Undergraduate

The IntroCS POGIL project is an NSF TUES project to study Process Oriented Guided Inquiry Learning (POGIL) in Introductory CS Courses. The main goal is to study factors that most influence faculty to adopt POGIL in introductory CS courses and how the degree of POGIL implementation impacts student learning and engagement. A secondary goal is to make it significantly easier for CS faculty to adopt POGIL by disseminating high-quality instructional resources and enhancing current professional development practices. The project theory of action is that enhanced instructor support will improve faculty adoption of and persistence with POGIL, which in turn will improve student outcomes. To assess the impact of these and other factors, the project will collect and analyze multi-institutional data including surveys, interviews, and grades.

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Discussion from the 2019 STEM for All Video Showcase (20 posts)
  • Icon for: Clif Kussmaul

    Clif Kussmaul

    Lead Presenter
    Principal Consultant
    May 13, 2019 | 06:17 a.m.

    Hello and welcome to our video about POGIL in introductory CS courses! Research shows that people learn best when they interact and construct their own understanding of a topic, and POGIL is a great framework to make this happen. Our NSF IUSE project focuses on helping faculty to adopt POGIL, and understanding how POGIL affects faculty and students. We look forward to your comments, questions, and suggestions!

    Clif Kussmaul (for the IntroCS POGIL team)

  • Icon for: Dr. Hong Liu

    Dr. Hong Liu

    Higher Ed Faculty
    May 13, 2019 | 08:13 a.m.

    I am Hong Liu at Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University. I assume that your courses also involve team project as a significant part of the learning process, I would like to learn more detail about how to evaluate individual learning from teamwork. my email is liuho@erau.edu  

  • Icon for: Clif Kussmaul

    Clif Kussmaul

    Lead Presenter
    Principal Consultant
    May 13, 2019 | 11:27 a.m.

    Hello Hong, thank you for your comment & question. I think POGIL helps students to develop skills they need in team projects, which they often don't learn in traditional courses. My software engineering course uses both POGIL and team projects. My intro courses uses POGIL, and I encourage students to use pair programming for homework, but there are not team projects.

    To evaluate individual learning, many POGIL instructors have a short individual quiz after an activity, or embed clicker-style questions in the activity. Other POGIL instructors (including me) use more traditional exams and homework assignments to measure learning. Within the POGIL community, the ELIPSS project is focused on ways to measure process skills (communication, teamwork, critical thinking).

    I am also involved with the NSF OpenPath project to involve students in humanitarian FOSS projects, which often involves team project work. In our workshops, we encourage faculty to focus evaluate on the process (did students do the right things) rather than product (did they get code working, and was it accepted by the project), since the latter may be belong the students' control.

    Does this help? Do you have other questions?

  • Icon for: Laura Guertin

    Laura Guertin

    Higher Ed Faculty
    May 13, 2019 | 09:16 a.m.

    Thank you for your informative video on POGIL in CS. I'm familiar with POGIL in chemistry, and I'm pleased to see it is expanding to other disciplines. In your work, what do you find is the biggest barrier to adoption of this pedagogical technique by faculty? I've never used POGIL myself, and because my attendance can be inconsistent with my students (I teach at a commuter campus), I would always worry that I don't have enough students for the teams, roles would be unfilled, etc. Also, I'd have to sacrifice covering content to allow time for a POGIL activity. (as you can see, these would be my largest concerns!) Thanks for any information you can provide.

  • Icon for: Clif Kussmaul

    Clif Kussmaul

    Lead Presenter
    Principal Consultant
    May 13, 2019 | 01:52 p.m.

    Sorry, my reply appears as a separate comment below.

  • Icon for: Clif Kussmaul

    Clif Kussmaul

    Lead Presenter
    Principal Consultant
    May 13, 2019 | 11:35 a.m.

    For CS faculty, the biggest barrier is time to develop activities (if they don't already exist). There are multiple published collections in chemistry, and a growing set of materials for CS. Most of the chemistry sets were developed by teams of faculty with NSF support. Another common barrier is the effort to change how you teach, and to help students understand why you are doing something different and how it will help them in the long run. (POGIL is more work for students.)

    "Coverage" usually measures input (what the teacher does) not output (what the students learn). Multiple studies have found that POGIL students tend to be more successful both in a course and in subsequent courses. POGIL activities help to really understand key concepts, and they can figure out other things on their own, and the focus on teamwork, critical thinking, problem solving, etc. helps students to get better at figuring out things. Also, consider how much time we often spend "reviewing" topics from previous courses that students don't really understand or remember.

    Some POGIL faculty use POGIL in every class, others combine it with other approaches - POGIL or other intensive active learning for the important, difficult concepts; lectures or other faster delivery (flipped classroom) for other content. Each teacher has to find the mix that works for them.

    If you haven't, I encourage you to attend a POGIL workshop to learn more about how it works, and how teachers at different institutions address the challenges you describe, and other challenges too.

    Do you have any other questions?

     
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    Discussion is closed. Upvoting is no longer available

    Danielle Watt
  • Icon for: Danielle Watt

    Danielle Watt

    Facilitator
    Director of Education, Outreach, Diversity
    May 13, 2019 | 04:12 p.m.

    Thank you for sharing your project! How difficult has it been in recruiting faculty to train to use POGIL in their courses and what have you done to overcome this if it has been a challenge? Since preparation time was the main challenge for faculty, what are the resources you plan to provide to help reduce?

  • Icon for: Clif Kussmaul

    Clif Kussmaul

    Lead Presenter
    Principal Consultant
    May 13, 2019 | 04:29 p.m.

    Hi Danielle, thanks for your comment & questions.

    To recruit faculty participants, we do 1/2 and 1 day workshops. We started with workshops at conference (e.g. at SIGCSE, the main US conference for CS education). We tried smaller conferences, but it was hard to get enough people for an effective workshop. We also realize that many faculty aren't able to attend conferences, particularly if they are at community colleges or comprehensive institutions without deep financial resources. Thus, we now offer "workshops on request" - if local organizer(s) can register 16+ teachers of whom 8+ teach intro CS, we will provide materials, a facilitator, & their travel expenses for a workshop. This has been a win-win - the local organizers handle publicity & logistics through their local institution & connections, and we provide a workshop experience. We plan to contact dept head / dean level people at specific institutions and see how that works too.

    For preparation time, part of the challenge is developing or adapting materials. We have several sets of materials for CS1, and continue working to make them easier to adapt by splitting them into pieces that can easily be rearranged, indicating learning objectives & prerequisites, etc. We're also trying to foster teams of faculty to develop materials for other courses, as has happened for a variety of courses in chemistry, biology, and health sciences. Another part of preparation time is planning how to use a specific activity in a class. We try to help faculty think about this during a summer workshop, and provide an experienced mentor for them to talk to as they start using POGIL. Preparation also gets much easier with practice - I've even talked to some faculty who feel that POGIL requires less pre-class prep than a lecture.

    Does this make sense? Do you have more questions?

     
    1
    Discussion is closed. Upvoting is no longer available

    Danielle Watt
  • Icon for: Danielle Watt

    Danielle Watt

    Facilitator
    Director of Education, Outreach, Diversity
    May 15, 2019 | 11:40 p.m.

    Thank you for the follow up. I really like the idea of the workshops on request as this can connect faculty at community colleges, MSI, and other institutions that may not have the resources. Are you analyzing how/what impact these "mini POGIL communities" have on faculty adopting/implementing POGIL after the workshop?

  • Icon for: Clif Kussmaul

    Clif Kussmaul

    Lead Presenter
    Principal Consultant
    May 16, 2019 | 07:00 a.m.

    Another challenge is that CCs, MSIs, tend to have heavier teaching loads and more part-time faculty, both of which make more challenging to adopt POGIL & develop activities.  We're also trying to find better ways to contact the right people at such institutions to tell them about POGIL and workshops.

    The POGIL Project does keep a list of people who have attended workshops and every year or so sends out an implementation survey to find out what people are doing. But some people ignore such surveys, so it's hard to know what people do. I think of POGIL as a collection of practices that work really well together, and I suspect that many workshop participants adopt or adapt a subset of practices, so their teaching has changed in a meaningful way but they might not self-report as adopting POGIL.

    For IntroCS POGIL, we are interviewing our participating faculty, and we've talked about trying to interview CS faculty who attended a workshop but didn't participate in our project, to better understand why they did or didn't adopt POGIL (or some practices). That might help us understand more about how faculty decide to try and/or persist, and what interventions might help them.

     
    1
    Discussion is closed. Upvoting is no longer available

    Danielle Watt
  • Icon for: Phillip Eaglin, PhD

    Phillip Eaglin, PhD

    Facilitator
    Founder and CEO
    May 13, 2019 | 06:55 p.m.

    Thanks!  Making your college courses interactive for students lets them connect their different and shared experiences and prior knowledge to the content and socially construct new understanding. They should feel empowered!  Question: How is the process used in learning how to program?  

  • Icon for: Clif Kussmaul

    Clif Kussmaul

    Lead Presenter
    Principal Consultant
    May 14, 2019 | 12:52 p.m.

    I've seen POGIL used in several ways in intro programming courses, such as:

    • Provide a short code example that uses a new syntax element (if-else, loop, array, etc) and ask questions that prompt teams to understand how it works and then make specific changes or use the syntax in a new context. For example, show a while loop and have them figure out when and how the test controls behavior.
    • Use a code or non-code example to show a problem that motivates new syntax, and once students understand the objective, introduce the new syntax that does it. For example, I wrote an activity on unit testing that gradually leads to the JUnit framework.
    • use an interesting problem, and then ask questions that prompt teams to analyze it and develop requirements for a program to solve it (perhaps as a later homework assignment). For example, I have an activity where students gradually develop simulations for infectious diseases.

    The faculty participants in IntroCS POGIL are mostly using sets of activities by Helen Hu and Chris Mayfield. To see some examples, check out activities at http://cspogil.org/Computer+Science+1

     
    1
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    Phillip Eaglin, PhD
  • Icon for: Dr. Hong Liu

    Dr. Hong Liu

    Higher Ed Faculty
    May 14, 2019 | 10:03 a.m.

    Hi, Cliff and Laura,

    Thanks for your detailed replies, it helps, and I will dig more details about your practice, which is related to the Model-based reasoning and assessment that we used to teach computational and data science courses.

  • Icon for: Clif Kussmaul

    Clif Kussmaul

    Lead Presenter
    Principal Consultant
    May 16, 2019 | 07:04 a.m.

    There are certainly connections & overlap between POGIL and other approaches to teaching and learning. POGIL combines a set of practices (teams, role, inquiry, learning cycles, teacher facilitation, etc) that seem to work really well together but also work well alone or in other combinations. If there's something magic about POGIL, I think it's the structure - when I started with POGIL, I felt like it helped me achieve my teaching goals more quickly than I was doing on my own by trial and error.

  • Icon for: Shuchi Grover

    Shuchi Grover

    Researcher
    May 14, 2019 | 01:10 p.m.

    Hi Cliff,

    Great to see your POGIL work showcase. Are you using POGIL in K-12 settings as well? High school, maybe? I'd love toI'd love hear about POGIL experiences in K-12 classrooms.

  • Icon for: Clif Kussmaul

    Clif Kussmaul

    Lead Presenter
    Principal Consultant
    May 14, 2019 | 01:50 p.m.

    Hi Shuchi,

    There are quite a few teachers using POGIL for high school chemistry, biology, life science, & earth science:

    https://pogil.org/educators/become-a-pogil-practitioner/curricular-materials/high-school-advanced-placement

    The IntroCS POGIL project is funded by IUSE (undergraduate STEM), but several of the PIs have also worked with high school CS teachers, and there are some activities, but not yet a full curriculum, which makes it more difficult for HS teachers to adopt. For example, several summers ago we had a team of HS & college faculty (& one motivated undergrad) writing activities for CS Principles, and we had a Google CS4HS grant to work with a cohort of HS teachers. I'd love to do more with POGIL in K-12 CS.

     

  • Icon for: Marcelo Worsley

    Marcelo Worsley

    Facilitator
    Assistant Professor
    May 14, 2019 | 02:55 p.m.

    Clif,

    Great to hear about this work in computer science. I wanted to ask about how materials are being developed. I see that your project team members are creating activities. Are past POGIL workshop attendees able to contribute new activity designs? How are those activities vetted for inclusion? 

  • Icon for: Clif Kussmaul

    Clif Kussmaul

    Lead Presenter
    Principal Consultant
    May 14, 2019 | 07:48 p.m.

    Hi Marcelo, thanks for your questions.

    Some people start to write new activities after a 1-day workshop, but we encourage prospective authors to attend a longer workshop. The POGIL Project (http://pogil.org) offers 3-day workshops that include sessions on writing - the structure of activities, learning objectives, models, author coaching, etc. The POGIL Project also runs a Writers Retreat, and reviews activities (using a set of rubrics) to determine how well they align with POGIL principles.

    Within the CS POGIL community, we encourage people to share activities and submit them for review. The activities listed at http://cspogil.org include activities at various levels of development - drafts to activities that use some elements of POGIL to activities that have been reviewed & endorsed by The POGIL Project.

     
    1
    Discussion is closed. Upvoting is no longer available

    Danielle Watt
  • Icon for: Marcelo Worsley

    Marcelo Worsley

    Facilitator
    Assistant Professor
    May 15, 2019 | 10:21 a.m.

    Clif,

    Thanks for the additional details. It sounds like you have a great system in place. The writers retreat is a great idea. Can you say more about the rubrics that are used? Are there also some post-activity follow-up questions to help refine activities?

  • Icon for: Clif Kussmaul

    Clif Kussmaul

    Lead Presenter
    Principal Consultant
    May 16, 2019 | 07:17 a.m.

    One rubric focuses on the structure of the activity. Are the learning objectives clear? Are students likely to achieve them? Are the models (examples) appropriately complex? Do the questions guide students to explore them model, invent their own understanding, and apply it? Is the sequencing logical? Is the wording appropriate to the audience?

    Another rubric focuses more on the process skills. Does the activity engage all students and prompt students to work together? Does it prompt students to use specific skills (e.g., critical thinking, problem solving) and to reflect on what they have learned?

    So the review of an activity is like the review of a journal paper - it considers whether the content is appropriate, and provides feedback and suggestions to improve it.

    When I do POGIL in class, I always have a printed copy for reference, and at the end of class it's often covered with notes and ideas for revision, based on what I see and hear during class. Here's a question that confused some teams. Here's a place where teams got stuck, and a question or observation that helped them move forward. Here's a question that could be skipped or elaborated depending on timing. It's amazing what we can learn from our students if we stop talking, and watch and listen. :-)

     

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