Paper presented to the SEDA/AISHE conference at Dublin Castle

A paper on the background, management and outcomes of organising large undergraduate computing labs was presented at the Supporting & Evaluating Change conference in Dublin Castle. The authors were Charlie Daly, Dave Donnellan, Monica Ward and Ray Walshe; myself (Charlie Daly) and Dave Donnellan gave the presentation.

The slides are available as powerpoint presentations:

1. Background and context presented by Charlie Daly
2. Details on the lab tutor system presented by Dave Donnellan

A few questions/points were asked/raised:

1. On being told that students who fail the semester one exam can still pass the year if they do well in the semester two programming exam, the question arose:

   "Do the students know this in advance?"

   Ans: Students who fail are informed that they still have a chance of passing the year; but it is not officially written down anywhere. There is an official policy in DCU that semester one results are provisional and may be reviewed in the light of semester two performance.

   [Although DCU is putatively semesterised, the academic year is still the basic progression unit.]

2. "Female students interaction tends to be more learning oriented whereas male student interaction tends to be more socially organised; this would explain how females did better when student interaction is encouraged."

3. "Are you not just pushing the problem down the line; these students may fail in second (or later) year(s)"

   Ans: Of course we don't know what will happen to these students yet. However, I would hope that when these students have learned to program, that the pleasure of being on top of a subject will be particularly motivating to them. [In fact that wasn't my answer; but it is better and more coherent than my actual answer, which in any event I can't remember.]

4. "Do the second year tutors benefit academically as a result of being a tutor?"

   Ans: This is a very interesting question and we intend to look at the performance of tutors. However the current batch of tutors still haven't finished the year (at time of writing) and so we don't know. I am hopeful that the experience of explaining the basics to other students will improve their own understanding of the material. In addition, these tutors tended to adopt a much more responsible academic attitude, and to be concerned more about programming ability than examination results.