Computer Science Education
Software devleopment is a highly social process, requiring constant interaction with colleagues, planning sessions, and interaction. Throughout my graduate studies, I worked as a research assistant on the NSF ITWF grant "Collaboration through Agile Software Development Practices: A Means for Improvement in Quality and Retention for the IT Workforce." The grant focused on the use of agile software development principles to infuse computer science courses with a more collaborative and social atmosphere. Our goal is to pique their social interests as well as their engineering proclivities.
We supplemented traditional teaching approaches with socially-relevant assignments and projects, rapid feedback and active learning to appeal to a wider variety of students. Our studies have shown that this approach to computer science education alleviates previously existing disparities in classroom performance between students of different personality types and learning styles, and is subjectively more appealing and engaging to a variety of students, including women and minorities.
A key aspect of engaging a diverse sets of students is collaborative learning. In our research and in our classrooms, we have relied heavily on Pair Learning to achieve this goal. The dynamics and benefits of Pair Learning in computer science are similar to those of lab partners in traditional physical sciences. A pair of students are often capable of resolving technical problems that may thwart an individual's progress, students develop a sense of comrarderie and even courage in attacking difficult material, and the interpersonal dialogue stimualtes some of the benefits of active learning and didactic thinking. We have created a web site with resources on Pair Learning, including a 10-minute free video for educators to show their students on the dos and don'ts of pair programming.
- [LWSB08] Lucas Layman, Laurie Williams, Kelli Slaten, Sarah Berenson, and Mladen Vouk, "Addressing Diverse Needs through a Balance of Agile and Plan-driven Software Development Methodologies in the Core Software Engineering Course," International Journal of Engineering Education, vol. 24, issue 4, pp. 659-670.
- Laurie Williams, D. Scott McCrickard, Lucas Layman, Khaled Hussein, “Eleven Guidelines for Implementing Pair Programming in the Classroom,” Proceedings of Agile 2008, Toronto, ON, pp. 445-452.
- [WL07] Laurie Williams, Lucas Layman, "Lab Partners: If They're Good Enough for the Sciences, Why Aren't They Good Enough for Us?" Conference on Software Engineering Education and Training (CSEET '07), pp. 72-82.
- [WLS07] Laurie Williams, Lucas Layman, Kelli M. Slaten, Carolyn Seaman, Sarah B. Berenson, "On the Impact of a Collaborative Pedagogy on African-American Millennial Students in Software Engineering," International Conference on Software Engineering Educator's Symposium (ICSE '07), pp. 677-687.
- [LWS07] Lucas Layman, Laurie Williams, Kelli Slaten, "Note to Self: Make Assignments Meaningful," Proceedings of the ACM Technical Symposium on Computer Science Education (SIGCSE '07), pp. 459-463.
- [LLO06] Laurie Williams, Lucas Layman, Jason Osborne, Neha Katira, "Examining the Compatibility of Student Pair Programmers," Proceedings of Agile 2006, Minneapolis, MN, July 23-28, 2006, pp. 411-420.
- [Lay06] Lucas Layman, "Changing Students' Perceptions: An Analysis of the Supplementary Benefits of Collaborative Software Development," Proceedings of 19th Conference on Software Engineering Education and Training (CSEET '06), Turtle Bay, HI, April 19-21, 2006, pp. 159-166.
- [LCW06] Lucas Layman, Travis Cornwell, and Laurie Williams, "Personality Types, Learning Styles, and an Agile Approach to Software Engineering Education," Proceedings of the ACM Technical Symposium on Computer Science Education (SIGCSE '06), Houston, TX, March 1-5, 2006, pp. 428-432.
- [LWO05] Lucas Layman, Laurie Williams, Jason Osborne, Sarah Berenson, Kelli Slaten, and Mladen Vouk, "How and Why Collaborative Software Development Impacts the Software Engineering Course," Proceedings of Frontiers in Education (FIE 05), Indianapolis, IN, pp. T4C 914.
- [SDB05] Kelli M. Slaten, Maria Droujkova, Sarah Berenson, Laurie Williams, and Lucas Layman, "Undergraduate Student Perceptions of Pair Programming and Agile Software Methodologies: Verifying a Model of Social Interaction," Proceedings of Agile Conference 2005, Denver, CO, July 24-29, 2005, pp. 323-330.
- Lucas Layman, Travis Cornwell, Laurie Williams, and Jason Osborne, "Personality Profiles and Learning Styles of Advanced Undergraduate Computer Science Students," North Carolina State University Department of Computer Science, TR-2005-40.
Teaching Portfolio
This purpose of this teaching portfolio is to communicate my teaching teaching philosophy, how that philosophy has borne out in my teaching experiences, and how my professional development and research experiences have shaped my teaching philosophy. My primary source of teaching experience has been as a teaching assistant and lab instructor for the undergraduate software engineering course at North Carolina State University. Since my time as a teaching assistant, I have attended numerous professional development activities, including workshops for the Certificate of Accomplishment in Teaching Program at NCSU, and conducted research on computer science education.
Teaching Portfolio Index
Last modified Tuesday, 14th August, 2012 @ 09:33pm