Scholarship of Teaching & Learning Success
Dr Judi McCuaig, Associate Professor in the School of Computer Science, has been awarded funding to investigate the impact of immediate feedback on student learning and engagement.
In particular, Dr McCuaig has received funding from the University of Guelph's Learning Enhancement Fund, from the Physical Science & Engineering Education Research Centre, and from the AVPA's Scholarship of Teaching & Learning Fund. The funding has been provided to support her Immediate Feedback System (IFS) research program which explores the impacts of immediate feedback on student engagement and problem-solving skills.
"Research has shown that immediate feedback is incredibly important for our ability to master a topic and develop critical thinking and problem-solving skills. It helps us reinforce positive behaviours and patterns while correcting negative ones before they take root. As our classes grow in size, it becomes more difficult to provide feedback in a timely manner," McCuaig describes. "My lab is working to develop and evaluate tools that will provide computer science students with feedback before they submit assignments; hopefully allowing them to build a personal set of problem-solving skills as well as capture and correct any mistakes they've made before the work is formally evaluated."
McCuaig will also be taking part in the Scholarship of Teaching & Learning Inquire Certificate program through Open Education this summer.
For more information on her PSEER, SoTL, and LEF funded projects, see below.
Research Program: The Immediate Feedback System (IFS)
PSEER Project:
Formative assessment is known to be valuable for educators and students, however, instructors of large classes cannot easily assess the areas of difficulty for their students because it is impossible to quickly review the work of hundreds of students. This capacity-building project is focused on the research question “Can automated feedback for instructors serve as a type of formative evaluation?” This project will extend the Immediate Feedback System with capability of providing on-demand formative assessment information to instructors. For example, instructors could get reports about common errors students are making, about the frequency of use of specific help modules or queries, or about the time students report spending on specific aspects of the course.
LEF Project:
Post-secondary instructors and employers identify problem-solving as a key attribute that contributes to the success or failure of a student or employee. When students begin post-secondary studies, their problem-solving skills are often unsophisticated and unpracticed. This project will result in the creation of an experiential curriculum for teaching problem-solving skills to provide students with metacognitive knowledge about their own problem-solving approaches. The curriculum will be designed in consultation with upper year computing students and tested with third and fourth semester computing students using case studies derived from programming assignments. The case studies focus on content that the students already have mastery of to reduce the cognitive load and allow focus on metacognition about the problem-solving process. The efficacy of this approach will be evaluated during a 2-day workshop for undergraduate students in Winter 2019
SoTL Project:
STEM programs place high value on the development of problem-solving skills in their students. However, the assessment of problem-solving skills is challenging and, at present, domain specific. Frequently, the skill that is unintentionally assessed by predominately pencil/paper problem-solving measures is test-taking, rendering the assessment of problem-solving skill invalid. This research will develop instruments for assessing the problem-solving skills of computer science students. The instruments will be designed to avoid reliance on test-taking skills to obtain a valid measure.