Abstract:

According to the nationwide survey to 1,008 under graduates in the U.S., 51% of students answered “very satisfied” and 36% answered “somewhat satisfied” with their classes when the classes were in-person, but after moving to remote instruction, the percentage of “very satisfied” went down to 19% and “somewhat satisfied” went 40% (Means, B, et al., 2020).
Students were satisfied to the quality of course content and instruction but they were relatively not satisfied with how well they were learning in on-line classes. Towards mid and post COVID-19 education, we need to activate on-line classes to have students motivated and confident.

In this paper, we report about our experience and findings from changing three programming classes from face-to-face to on-line due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
Class A is a computer science experiment for 3rd grade to learn database operation and web scraping using Python. Class B is an advanced C programming class for 2nd grade students, and class C is a seminar for 3rd grade students to learn C programming, TeX, and basic commands and usage of Ubuntu, Linux. The number of students taking the 3 classes are 47, 39, and 23, respectively.

In the original plan of the class A, students was going to do python programming with JupyterLab locally installed on the computers in the computer exercise room in our department. In class B, students do programming with Visual Studio for this past several years. During class students can discuss or ask other student about how to code assignment programs. In class C, students are sitting next to each other just like with class B and code assignment programs one-by-one as a part of seminar course.

Use online tools or lap tops at home? The survey revealed that more than 90% of students in our department have at least one personal computer at home. However, the environment, such as operating system, file system, and application software version, varies greatly from student to student.
So we decided to go online entirely for class A and B, and partially for class C. We sent rap-top computers with USB memories where the ISO image of Ubuntu is saved to all students taking class C.

As a Python programming environment for class A, we used Google colaboratory, a free web-based programming environment provided by Google LLC. As a C programming environment for class B, we used paiza.io, a free web-based multilingual programming environment provided by Paiza.inc.

We share our experience of how we organized full on-line programming classes including: what kind of teaching materials we developed, how we supported students during and after classes, how we tried to keep track of the progress of students who are always off the camera and have few remarks and chat inputs. We also report a case of active learning in full-online programming class.

Keywords:

On-line, programming class, COVID-19, active learning, clicker.