The Self-Paced Learning Increases Retention and Capacity (SPARC) project is responding to the well-documented surge in CS enrollment by creating a self-paced learning environment that blends online learning, automated assessment, collaborative practice, and peer-supported learning. SPARC delivers educational material online, encourages students to practice programming in groups, frees them to learn material at their own pace, and allows them to demonstrate proficiency at any time. This model contrasts with traditional course offerings, which impose a single schedule of due dates and exams for all students. SPARC allows students to complete courses faster or slower at a pace tailored to the individual, thereby allowing universities to teach more students with the same or fewer resources. This paper describes the goals and elements of the SPARC model as applied to CS1. We present results so far and discuss the future of the project.

References

[1]

J.R. Abel and R. Deitz. 2014. Do the Benefits of College Still Outweigh the Costs? Federal Reserve Bank of New York: Current Issues in Economics and Finance 20, 3 (2014).

Google Scholar

[2]

Susan Aud and Sidney Wilkinson-Flicker. 2013. The Condition of Education 2013. US Department of Education, National Center for Education Statistics. NCES 2013-037.

Google Scholar

[3]

L. Barker, T. Camp, E. Walker, and S. Zweben. 2015. Booming Enrollments - What is the Impact? Computing Research News 27, 5 (May 2015).

Google Scholar

[4]

J. Campbell, D. Horton, M. Craig, and P. Gries. 2014. Evaluating an inverted CS1. In Proceedings of the 45th ACM Technical Symposium on Computer Science Education (SIGCSE '14). 307--312.

Digital Library

Google Scholar

[5]

Oliver Van DeMille. 2009. A Thomas Jefferson Education: Teaching a Generation of Leaders for the Twenty-First Century. TJEdOnline.com.

Google Scholar

[6]

Richard A. DeMillo. 2011. Abelard to Apple: The Fate of American Colleges and Universities. MIT Press.

Google Scholar

[7]

Julie Krause, Irene Polycarpou, and Keith Hellman. 2012. Exploring formal learning groups and their impact on recruitment of women in undergraduate CS. In Proceedings of the 43rd ACM Technical Symposium on Computer Science Education. ACM, 179--184.

Digital Library

Google Scholar

[8]

Gregor Novak, Evelyn T. Patterson, Andrew D. Gavrin, and Wolfgang Christian. 1999. Just-In-Time Teaching: Blending Active Learning with Web Technology. Prentice Hall, Upper Saddle River, NJ.

Google Scholar

[9]

N. Orhun. 2007. An investigation into the mathematics achievement and attitude towards mathematics with respect to learning style according to gender. International Journal of Mathematical Education in Science and Technology 38, 3 (2007), 321--333.

Crossref

Google Scholar

[10]

Leo Porter, Cynthia Bailey Lee, and Beth Simon. 2013. Halving fail rates using peer instruction: A study of four computer science courses. In Proceeding of the 44th ACM Technical Symposium on Computer Science Education. ACM, 177--182.

Digital Library

Google Scholar

[11]

R. Rutherfoord and J. Rutherfoord. 2013. Flipping the classroom: Is it for you? Proceedings of the 14th Annual ACM SIGITE Conference on Information Technology Education (2013), 19--22.

Digital Library

Google Scholar

Cited By

View all

Szabo CParker MFriend MJeuring JKohn TMalmi LSheard JStone JYuen TShoop LRebelsky SPrather J(2025)Models of Mastery Learning for Computing EducationProceedings of the 56th ACM Technical Symposium on Computer Science Education V. 110.1145/3641554.3701868(1092-1098)Online publication date: 12-Feb-2025
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3641554.3701868
Cipriano BBaltazar BFachada NVourvopoulos AAlves P(2024)Bridging the Gap between Project-Oriented and Exercise-Oriented Automatic Assessment ToolsComputers10.3390/computers1307016213:7(162)Online publication date: 30-Jun-2024
https://doi.org/10.3390/computers13070162
Lenfant RWanner AHott JPettit RLaakso MMonga MSimon Sheard J(2023)Project-Based and Assignment-Based Courses: A Study of Piazza Engagement and Gender in Online CoursesProceedings of the 2023 Conference on Innovation and Technology in Computer Science Education V. 110.1145/3587102.3588833(138-144)Online publication date: 29-Jun-2023
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3587102.3588833
Show More Cited By

Index Terms

A Novel Self-Paced Model for Teaching Programming
1. Social and professional topics
  1. Professional topics
    1. Computing education
      1. Computing education programs
        Computer science education

Recommendations

Employing Wikibook project in a linguistics course to promote peer teaching and learning

Peer teaching and learning are learner-centred approaches with great potential for promoting effective learning, and the fast development of Web 2.0 technology has opened new doors for promoting peer teaching and learning. In this study, we aim to ...
Teaching programming with flipped classroom method: a study from two programming courses
Koli Calling '15: Proceedings of the 15th Koli Calling Conference on Computing Education Research

Flipped classroom teaching method, where theory is studied at home and exercises are done in the classroom, is gaining foothold in teaching. The method has been used with different approaches and guidelines, yet a single unified process has not been ...
Constructivist approaches for teaching computer programming
SIGITE '05: Proceedings of the 6th conference on Information technology education

This paper discusses the application of constructivist pedagogical approaches to teaching computer programming in high school and undergraduate courses. It provides an overview of constructivist pedagogy and contrasts it with traditional objectivist ...

Comments

Information & Contributors

Information

Published In

L@S '17: Proceedings of the Fourth (2017) ACM Conference on Learning @ Scale

April 2017

352 pages

ISBN:9781450344500

DOI:10.1145/3051457

General Chair:
Claudia Urrea
Massachusetts Institute of Technology, USA
,
Program Chairs:
Justin Reich
Massachusetts Institute of Technology, USA
,
Candace Thille
Stanford University, USA

Permission to make digital or hard copies of all or part of this work for personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. Copyrights for components of this work owned by others than the author(s) must be honored. Abstracting with credit is permitted. To copy otherwise, or republish, to post on servers or to redistribute to lists, requires prior specific permission and/or a fee. Request permissions from [email protected].

Publisher

Association for Computing Machinery

New York, NY, United States

Publication History

Published: 12 April 2017

Permissions

Request permissions for this article.

Request Permissions

Check for updates

Author Tags

Qualifiers

Short-paper

Funding Sources

Google

Conference

L@S 2017

Sponsor:

L@S 2017: Fourth (2017) ACM Conference on Learning @ Scale

April 20 - 21, 2017

Massachusetts, Cambridge, USA

Acceptance Rates

L@S '17 Paper Acceptance Rate 14 of 105 submissions, 13%;

Overall Acceptance Rate 117 of 440 submissions, 27%

Other Metrics

View Article Metrics

Bibliometrics & Citations

Bibliometrics

Article Metrics

9
Total Citations
View Citations
275
Total Downloads

Downloads (Last 12 months)12
Downloads (Last 6 weeks)2

Reflects downloads up to 05 Mar 2025

Other Metrics

View Author Metrics

Citations

Cited By

View all

Szabo CParker MFriend MJeuring JKohn TMalmi LSheard JStone JYuen TShoop LRebelsky SPrather J(2025)Models of Mastery Learning for Computing EducationProceedings of the 56th ACM Technical Symposium on Computer Science Education V. 110.1145/3641554.3701868(1092-1098)Online publication date: 12-Feb-2025
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3641554.3701868
Cipriano BBaltazar BFachada NVourvopoulos AAlves P(2024)Bridging the Gap between Project-Oriented and Exercise-Oriented Automatic Assessment ToolsComputers10.3390/computers1307016213:7(162)Online publication date: 30-Jun-2024
https://doi.org/10.3390/computers13070162
Lenfant RWanner AHott JPettit RLaakso MMonga MSimon Sheard J(2023)Project-Based and Assignment-Based Courses: A Study of Piazza Engagement and Gender in Online CoursesProceedings of the 2023 Conference on Innovation and Technology in Computer Science Education V. 110.1145/3587102.3588833(138-144)Online publication date: 29-Jun-2023
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3587102.3588833
Colwell JHutchison AGutierrez KOffutt JEvmenova A(2023)Elementary teachers’ experiences in online professional development for literacy-focused computer science instruction for all learnersComputer Science Education10.1080/08993408.2023.226383134:3(546-565)Online publication date: 2-Oct-2023
https://doi.org/10.1080/08993408.2023.2263831
Hutchison AGutierrez KColwell JEvmenova AOffutt JGross M(2022)Evaluating the role of professional development on elementary teachers’ knowledge, comfort, and beliefs related to teaching computer science to students with high-incidence disabilitiesJournal of Research on Technology in Education10.1080/15391523.2022.208940855:6(1003-1019)Online publication date: 8-Jul-2022
https://doi.org/10.1080/15391523.2022.2089408
Baral KOffutt JAmmann PMohod RPraphamontripong A(2021)Practice makes better: quiz retake software to increase student learningProceedings of the 3rd International Workshop on Education through Advanced Software Engineering and Artificial Intelligence10.1145/3472673.3473965(47-53)Online publication date: 23-Aug-2021
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3472673.3473965
Mirza DConrad PLloyd CMatni ZGatin AMcCartney RPetersen ARobins AMoskal AMcCartney RRobins A(2019)Undergraduate Teaching Assistants in Computer ScienceProceedings of the 2019 ACM Conference on International Computing Education Research10.1145/3291279.3339422(31-40)Online publication date: 30-Jul-2019
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3291279.3339422
Luxton-Reilly ASimon Albluwi IBecker BGiannakos MKumar AOtt LPaterson JScott MSheard JSzabo CRößling GScharlau B(2018)Introductory programming: a systematic literature reviewProceedings Companion of the 23rd Annual ACM Conference on Innovation and Technology in Computer Science Education10.1145/3293881.3295779(55-106)Online publication date: 2-Jul-2018
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3293881.3295779
Kapoor MHua SAnastasiu D(2018)Improving Student Motivation through Competitive Active Learning2018 IEEE Frontiers in Education Conference (FIE)10.1109/FIE.2018.8658442(1-5)Online publication date: Oct-2018
https://doi.org/10.1109/FIE.2018.8658442

View Options

Login options

Check if you have access through your login credentials or your institution to get full access on this article.

Full Access

Get this Publication

View options

PDF

View or Download as a PDF file.

PDF

eReader

View online with eReader.

eReader

Abstract

References

Cited By

Index Terms

Recommendations

Employing Wikibook project in a linguistics course to promote peer teaching and learning

Teaching programming with flipped classroom method: a study from two programming courses

Constructivist approaches for teaching computer programming

Comments

Information

Published In

Sponsors

Publisher

Publication History

Permissions

Check for updates

Author Tags

Qualifiers

Funding Sources

Conference

Acceptance Rates

Contributors

Other Metrics

Bibliometrics

Article Metrics

Other Metrics

Citations

Cited By

Login options

Full Access

View options

PDF

eReader

Share

Share this Publication link

Share on social media

Affiliations