Course: Introduction to Computer Science
Instructor: Gu Xianbin, Assistant Professor of Practice in Computer Science
Students Enrolled: 80
Technology used: NYU Zoom, NYU Stream, Forums on NYU Classes, VoiceThread
Introduction to Computer Science (ICS) is a required course for all students planning to major in computer science. This semester, 80 students are enrolled in the class, with around 90% of them in China and the rest of them spread out across North America and Europe. With such a large number of students, the challenge for Gu Xianbin and his colleague Guo Li, Assistant Professor of Practice in Data Science, has been keeping the class on the same page and managing the course efficiently.
ICS is composed of lectures, lab sessions, assignments, quizzes, and exams. To bring the class online, Xianbin and Li used NYU Stream to record and edit course videos and used VoiceThread to hold lab sessions. Students are able to interact with instructors, teaching assistants, and classmates by using video annotations on NYU Stream and VoiceThread, and they participate in discussions on Forums through NYU Classes.
Information and class materials are scattered across multiple platforms, so in order to mitigate confusion, Xianbin and Li have centralized all course information on a single Lesson page on NYU Classes. They have structured the Lesson page to contain several blocks, with course information, instructor contact information, online studying tips, and key dates pinned to the top. The subsequent blocks of information contain the links to all course materials including videos, VoiceThread materials, and so forth.
The above are screenshots of Xianbin and Li’s lesson pages on NYU Classes.
Although the instructors are not always able to respond to students’ questions immediately, Xianbin found that asynchronous interactions have improved the efficiency of communications. Students raise questions by adding video annotations to video records on NYU Stream, and these questions inspire their classmates to engage with the content. The asynchronous nature of these interactions also gives students and instructors more time to think about the materials and organize their thoughts, which makes both questions and answers more accurate and on point.
“Sometimes they performed even better in discussions than the in-classroom cases,” says Xianbin. “As the annotations and answers posted on the video inspired them to think and ask questions.”
Challenges and Lessons Learned
Because programming is quite practical, and it is normal for different people to approach the same problem in different ways, students learn better if they are able to compare their solutions with each other. This is why Xianbin says the main challenge of teaching ICS remotely is the lack of real-time discussion.
To address this, Xianbin and Li plan to survey students about their thoughts on the course and implement improvements based on their feedback.
Another concern is that students are not able to receive answers immediately after they post their responses. Currently, the instructors have to check several platforms including VoiceThread, NYU Stream, and Forums on NYU Classes frequently in order to ensure responses to all student feedback. Xianbin says that a tool that could send them reminder emails when students post their questions would help solve this problem.