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Teaching CS1 with a Mastery Learning Framework: Impact on Students' Learning and Engagement

Published: 30 June 2023 Publication History

Abstract

Mastery Learning, a pedagogical strategy in which students are allowed to prove mastery of the skills acquired in a course over multiple attempts (and used failed attempts as feedback) is becoming increasingly popular in higher education. Large introductory programming courses can use it to strengthen students' preparation for later courses, but some challenges to its adoption remain, such as how to scale this format to hundreds of students, or how to ensure that students do not fall behind on the material. In Spring 2021, the instructors at the Anonymous University transformed the structure of their CS1 course using a Mastery Learning format, reorganizing the material in units focused on the different course topics. Students were allowed to prove mastery of each unit separately and over multiple times, without penalties for missed or failed attempts. In this experience report, we will describe the strategies adopted to cater to a large cohort of novice students. We will compare the students' learning experience with a cohort of students who took the course in a more traditional format, and show that the students benefited from the new format in terms of quantity of skills mastered. Students also exhibited signs of increased motivation to practice and complete tests without grade incentives. Finally, we will discuss some pitfalls in our design and address some of the concerns of instructors interested in trying a Mastery Learning approach in their CS1 courses.

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Cited By

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  • (2024)Teaching CS1 with a Mastery Learning Framework: Changes in CS2 Results and Students' SatisfactionProceedings of the 2024 on ACM Virtual Global Computing Education Conference V. 110.1145/3649165.3690105(221-227)Online publication date: 5-Dec-2024
  • (2024)Designing an AR-Based Guidance and Feedback System for Learning Assistance2024 5th International Conference on Information Technology and Education Technology (ITET)10.1109/ITET64267.2024.00018(51-55)Online publication date: 10-May-2024

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    cover image ACM Conferences
    ITiCSE 2023: Proceedings of the 2023 Conference on Innovation and Technology in Computer Science Education V. 1
    June 2023
    694 pages
    ISBN:9798400701382
    DOI:10.1145/3587102
    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].

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    Published: 30 June 2023

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    1. CS1
    2. alternative grading
    3. engagement
    4. mastery learning
    5. skill based assessment

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    • (2024)Teaching CS1 with a Mastery Learning Framework: Changes in CS2 Results and Students' SatisfactionProceedings of the 2024 on ACM Virtual Global Computing Education Conference V. 110.1145/3649165.3690105(221-227)Online publication date: 5-Dec-2024
    • (2024)Designing an AR-Based Guidance and Feedback System for Learning Assistance2024 5th International Conference on Information Technology and Education Technology (ITET)10.1109/ITET64267.2024.00018(51-55)Online publication date: 10-May-2024

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