Last modified: 2012-05-14
Abstract
The bachelor program in Information Systems at the University of Agder have for several years suffered from high drop-out rates. Some years ago up to 60% of the students dropped out during the three year bachelor programme. Previous research and own experience is that important factors influencing student motivation- and behaviour is self-efficacy and perceived value of content.
Several actions with focus on mastery and value were implemented. Drop-out rate went down to around 25 to 30%. However a group of courses remained problematic, the two mandatory programming courses.
Introductory programming courses tend to have bipolar grade distribution, which means quite many A and B, few C and many D and E. This was the situation also in our course. Programming have so called “Strong binding”, which means that understanding of previous themes is more necessary to be able to proceed to next theme.
We used to run the programming course in the “traditional” way, with weekly lectures. This way of running the course is suitable if the students learn in the same pace and course-content have weak binding. We previously experienced that as the semester went on fewer and fewer students had value of lectures: if they did not understand last week’s content, they were not prepared for new modules. Established learning theory says we learn best in the transition between what we can and new knowledge.
Previous research convinced us to implement the Keller plan, or Personalized System of Instruction (PSI). Our implementation of PSI is that the course content is divided into modules. Approval is needed to proceed to next module. All lectures are on-line. Practical exercises is central, assistant teachers and lecturers are present during lab-hours. Students get realistic challenges, since every student take the course adjusted to own competence.
The expected effect was an improvement in grades. This goal has been partially achieved. Students that passed in 2011 had improved grades. But in 2011 more students failed. However, we have analyzed the causes for this, and believe that it is caused by our implementation of the Keller plan, and not the Keller plan itself.
The grade distribution for 2011 appears almost flat, and there are more A, B, and C’s than in the previous years. In 2012 we have forced a minimum progress that hopefully will reduce number of fail and E. Results from exam 2012 will be presented at NU2012.
References
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