TUTORED VIDEO INSTRUCTION

CSE142: COMPUTER PROGRAMMING I

CLASSROOM ASSESSMENT TOOLS AND ACTIVITIES

Tammy VanDeGrift
Graduate Student, CSE
tammy@cs.washington.edu

 

Classroom Assessment Tools

Classroom Assessment Tools (CATs) allow instructors to collect information from their students about what they are learning in class.  CATs are typically ungraded exercises submitted anonymously by students, producing honest feedback from the students.  These assessment tools allow students and instructors to see flaws in student understanding and address these issues in a timely manner (rather than after a midterm or final exam).
 

CATs in the Context of TVI

The tutored video instruction (TVI) model includes a set of videos that are presented to students along with a facilitator who has a background in programming.  In order for a TVI course to be successful, it is important that the students enter into discussion about topics that are confusing to them during the course of watching a video and at its conclusion.  Also, discussions encourage students to use appropriate terminology that they are learning in the course.  The goal is for students to answer each other's questions based on the content in the videos and only rely on the facilitator for concepts confusing to the entire class.

We present CATs as supplementary material for TVI facilitators so they can address topics that might be confusing to students.  Also, students might think the material presented in a video is quite clear until they have to work with the new concepts.  These CATs give the students an opportunity to further their learning and discover concepts that might be difficult for them.  Hopefully, these CATs will be a springboard for student discussion.  Because discussion is extremely important for TVI courses, most of the CATs listed below are group or entire class exercises.
 

Using CATs

The setup of using classroom assessment tools is extremely important.  The facilitator should explain to the students why these tools are being used and that the activities will be beneficial to their learning.  Additionally, the follow up is just as critical -- be sure to summarize what the students learned by completing the assessment tool.

Each tool listed below includes goals, the purpose of the activity, a description of the activity, possible solutions, and possible extentions to the activity.  The goals for each activity are those listed in Classroom Assessment Techniques by Angelo and Cross.

Discussion Strategies

Click  here  for a list of discussion strategies that might be helpful when teaching the TVI Introductory Programming course.

General Purpose CATs

These tools can be adapted and used for every lecture.
 Minute Paper
 Muddiest Point
 Student Generated Test Questions

CATs Organized By TVI Lecture

References