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.