Next Generation Laboratories in Computer Science Education

University Of Virginia Main Campus, Charlottesville VA

Investigators

Abstract

Computer Science (31) Closed laboratories have become common in the computer science educational community as a means of enhancing student achievement. However, circumstances for many departments have changed since the original push to closed laboratories: rapid advances in web-based technologies and increasing ownership of networked personal computers by students makes it even less sensible to use closed laboratories to deliver exercises or tutorial activities and many institutions are facing increasing enrollments, shortage of space, or reduced budgets for laboratory assistants that require departments to ensure that resource expensive closed laboratory components for courses are used as wisely as possible. In this project we are re-examining the strengths of the closed laboratory model and assessing methods and technology for learning outside a closed laboratory in order to deliver better practicum experiences for students and to reduce a department's costs for developing and delivering closed-laboratory components in a computing curriculum. We are: (1) analyzing the needs for a closed-laboratory component for a course and also for the set of student activities carried out during a course's weekly laboratory sessions; (2) determining what practicum-oriented student activities are best served in a closed laboratory environment and which can effectively be handled outside a closed laboratory session; (3) identifying and documenting a set of best-practices of techniques and tools that can support effective learning activities for closed laboratories, and also for activities that are better moved to an open laboratory situation; and (4) using this set of best-practices to define a development guide for how to plan and implement laboratory components.