Embedding Programming Skills in Introductory Undergraduate Courses: Can Enforced Review Enhance Student Understanding and Confidence?
Abstract
Programming and modelling skills are rapidly becoming integral to solving problems in the earth sciences and as a result are increasingly valued by employers. In 2016, the University of Wollongong introduced a new first-year core curriculum that teaches introductory programming and modelling skills to all undergraduate students majoring in earth and environmental sciences, a cohort of 100-150 students per year. Using guided exercises written in Python and accessed via Jupyter Notebooks, students spend four weeks learning basic programming concepts followed by four weeks developing simple box models relevant to earth system science, including Daisyworld, population growth, and the carbon cycle. There is no final exam - instead, students work in groups to adapt the models in order to answer a new research question of their choice. During the initial pilot of the new curriculum in 2016, surveys showed that student confidence in their ability to learn computing skills dropped over the course of the semester - despite outcomes showing clear skill development. Informal feedback also suggested that because the weekly labs built on one another, students often felt that they didn't have a good enough grasp on what they learned in earlier weeks to apply this material to the exercises in the later weeks. Since 2017, we have included compulsory, open-book, repeatable weekly review quizzes after every lab. These have little impact on the students' overall grades, but instead serve as an enforced review process that require students to practice and further engage with the material outside of class. In this presentation, I will present preliminary findings on the effectiveness of these review quizzes for enhancing student understanding and confidence. I will also describe our general approach to teaching programming in an introductory earth science course, and the lessons we have learned along the way.
- Publication:
-
AGU Fall Meeting Abstracts
- Pub Date:
- December 2020
- Bibcode:
- 2020AGUFMED011..03F
- Keywords:
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- 0810 Post-secondary education;
- EDUCATION;
- 0820 Curriculum and laboratory design;
- EDUCATION;
- 0825 Teaching methods;
- EDUCATION;
- 0845 Instructional tools;
- EDUCATION