The University of Washington's Department of Computer Science & Engineering, in collaboration with several area community colleges, is exploring a new approach to introductory computer science education.

Our experiment addresses two issues. The first is the extraordinary labor involved in preparing materials for intensive courses such as UW's CSE 142 and CSE 143 -- generically, "CS 1" and "CS 2." Can we achieve economies? The second is articulation: can we make our courses more comparable, to facilitate transfer and to improve the foundation of all students?

TVI Background

Our approach is modeled after pioneering work conducted by Jim Gibbons, formerly Dean of Engineering at Stanford University. For many years, engineers at Hewlett-Packard facilities in the Bay Area had enrolled as part-time Masters students in Electrical Engineering at Stanford, taking courses via interactive television. (To be specific, the on-campus course was broadcast live on the Stanford television channel, and students at HP facilities interacted via speakerphone.) When HP built an engineering facility in Colorado, the company desired access to the same part-time Masters program. In response, Gibbons invented "tutored video instruction" (TVI).

In the TVI paradigm, minimally-edited videos of live, unrehearsed lectures are viewed by groups of students assisted by a trained tutor/facilitator. The tutor/facilitator and students are free to interrupt the video lecture at any time to ask questions or replay segments. The role of the tutor/facilitator -- someone who knows the course material well -- is to guide the students toward a resolution of the question. The less-inhibiting environment encourages students to ask more questions and participate more actively. A group discovery process occurs which enhances learning and builds communication and team skills. Most importantly, students in TVI sections out-perform students in the live classroom (as well as out-performing students in the interactive TV classroom, and students who watch the videotape on their own) -- in study after study, over a number of years. See the chart below.

A natural question is whether the TVI students were perhaps just better students than the on-campus students. The following data plots Stanford Masters GPA versus a quantitative measure of Admission Qualification, for both TVI and classroom students. It shows that the TVI students perform better than would be expected based upon their admission qualification.

Further information on TVI can be found in a recent report published by Sun Microsystems Laboratories, available here.

The UW CSE TVI Pilot Project

The UW Tutored Video Pilot Project is an effort to transport this success to the teaching of introductory computer science -- specifically, CSE 142, the "first course," and CSE 143, the "second course."

Students at local community colleges, and some in special sections on campues, use UW materials -- assignments, examinations, lecture transparencies, and lecture video. All of this material is delivered over the Internet, with the transparencies and video integrated using Microsoft NetShow: the UW lectures are encoded real-time into a streaming digital video format, with WWW URL's encoded in the video stream to automatically display the lecture transparencies at the right time.

At each remote site, the tutor/facilitator guides students through the material. Obviously, all course credits reside at the college where the course is taken, because the added effort and added value are being supplied there. Equally obviously, community college students completing this course receive "no questions asked" course quivalency should they choose to transfer to UW after receiving their 2-year degree.

There is the potential, in this application of the TVI concept, to revolutionize the teaching of introductory computer science in Washington, with great benefits to all students, and with significant implications for Washington's software industry workforce shortage.

Click here to see the slides from Ed Lazowska's presentation on TVI at theWCERTE Fall Meeting on October 22, 1998.