1 research outputs found
A Berkeley View of Teaching CS at Scale
Over the past decade, undergraduate Computer Science (CS) programs across the
nation have experienced an explosive growth in enrollment as computational
skills have proven increasingly important across many domains and in the
workforce at large. Motivated by this unprecedented student demand, the CS
program at the University of California, Berkeley has tripled the size of its
graduating class in five years. The first two introductory courses for majors,
each taught by one faculty instructor and several hundred student teachers,
combine to serve nearly 2,900 students per term. This report presents three
strategies that have enabled the effective teaching, delivery, and management
of large-scale CS courses: (1) the development of autograder infrastructure and
online platforms to provide instant feedback with minimal instructor
intervention and deliver the course at scale; (2) the expansion of academic and
social student support networks resulting from changes in teaching assistant
responsibilities and the development of several near-peer mentoring
communities; and (3) the expansion of undergraduate teacher preparation
programs to meet the increased demand for qualified student teachers. These
interventions have helped both introductory and advanced courses address
capacity challenges and expand enrollments while receiving among the highest
student evaluations of teaching in department history. Implications for
inclusivity and diversity are discussed.Comment: 39 pages;
https://www2.eecs.berkeley.edu/Pubs/TechRpts/2019/EECS-2019-99.htm