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Breaking the Textbook Paradigm: Increasing Access by Removing Words

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Conference

2024 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

Location

Portland, Oregon

Publication Date

June 23, 2024

Start Date

June 23, 2024

End Date

July 12, 2024

Conference Session

Software Engineering Division (SWED) Technical Session #2

Tagged Division

Software Engineering Division (SWED)

Tagged Topic

Diversity

Permanent URL

https://strategy.asee.org/48408

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Paper Authors

biography

Elise Deitrick Codio

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Elise has a BS in Computer Science and PhD in STEM Education. Her thesis was on interdisciplinary, collaborative computing using mixed methodologies. Elise combines her over a decade of teaching experience with her research background to create evidence-based computing education tools in her current role at Codio.

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biography

Maura Lyons Codio

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Maura is a Marketing Associate at Codio with a BA in Psychology and English.

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biography

Joshua Richard Coughlin Stowell Ball Codio Orcid 16x16 orcid.org/0009-0007-3976-8825

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Joshua Ball is Codio’s Vice President of Marketing and a Senior Fellow at the National Institute for Deterrence Studies.

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Abstract

Textbooks are an anachronistic element of education in the 21st century which previous research shows students do not read despite reading assignments. For over a decade, computing education has evolved from textbooks to ebooks to interactive learning experiences with animations, built-in IDEs, and autograders. More recent work has shown that many of these innovations such as paired programming, code visualizers, and Parsons problems have positive educational outcomes such as student engagement, retention, and increased learning gains – particularly for students from historically marginalized communities. Unfortunately, due to the origins of these learning experiences being textbooks they often still look like text-heavy ebooks instead of evidence-based, interactive learning experiences.

This paper uses data from a computing education platform used in dozens of US universities and thousands of students to explore the relationship between how much time students spend reading compared to the amount of text in the reading assignment. Specifically, we do multiple regression analyses to understand how independent variables including word count, assessments, and whether students engaged with code, affect dependent variables such as assignment grade and how student’s time was spent.

We find that even without fine-grained details, learning experiences where students are spending more time actively coding as opposed to reading result in higher performance. These at scale results solidify that it is time for the field to break out of the overly passive textbook paradigm and embrace learning experiences which center student opportunities to code.

Deitrick, E., & Lyons, M., & Ball, J. R. C. S. (2024, June), Breaking the Textbook Paradigm: Increasing Access by Removing Words Paper presented at 2024 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition, Portland, Oregon. https://strategy.asee.org/48408

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