Cooperative Learning

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be incorporated in the field of computer science curriculum at the Bachelor degree-level has grown tremendously. This growth affects not only the technologies ...
Cooperative Learning The Role of Extra-Curricula Activities Dimitar Christozov

John Galletly

Dept. of Computer Science American University in Bulgaria Blagoevgrad, Bulgaria, [email protected]

Dept. of Computer Science American University in Bulgaria Blagoevgrad, Bulgaria, [email protected]

Volin Karagiozov

Stoyan Bonev

Dept. of Computer Science American University in Bulgaria Blagoevgrad, Bulgaria, [email protected]

Dept. of Computer Science American University in Bulgaria Blagoevgrad, Bulgaria, [email protected]

Abstract-This paper describes an approach that has been adopted at the American University in Bulgaria in order to share the burden of the growing amount of content that a computer science student needs to master between regular curriculum content and extra-curricula activities. It emphasizes the role of students’ self-organized activities in complementing the regular curriculum by providing flexible alternatives to extend and further motivate students’ learning. Keywords-Cooperative learning, computer science curriculum, extra-curricula activities, student organization

I. INTRODUCTION During the last 20 years the amount of material that needs to be incorporated in the field of computer science curriculum at the Bachelor degree-level has grown tremendously. This growth affects not only the technologies that a student needs to master to become successful in his or her career (and especially in finding the first job), but also affects the fundamental computer science theory. The “classical” topics have been enriched and have split into numerous sub-fields, but also completely new areas have appeared. These new areas for the application of computer technology give rise to new problems, which lead to the development of new approaches, solutions, development techniques, etc. Now it is almost impossible to design a comprehensive curriculum in the computer science field that may fit into the standard time for study in higher education. This task is especially difficult for institutions such as the American University in Bulgaria (AUBG) which offer a liberal-arts education. Such institutions focus on general education and diversity of training. On one hand, computer science students benefit from this kind of education because they acquire better communication skills and a general knowledge of different fields, which make them more successful in addressing clients’ problems. On the other hand, the curriculum is necessarily limited to typically 1215 computer science courses. In the case of the AUBG, the curriculum for any major discipline, including Computer Science, is limited to 12 one-semester courses [1, 2, 3]. These limitations make the problem of achieving a good education in computer science not solely a problem for the faculty, but also a problem for the students, who clearly understand the benefits of a liberal-arts education, but also

need to acquire sufficient computer science knowledge and skills to be successful in the profession after graduation. In response to the above mentioned limitations of the traditional curriculum-driven education in liberal-arts institutions, the authors investigated a number of different pedagogical models for a solution to the problem, and eventually selected a cooperative learning model. The introduction of some elements of a cooperative learning approach may be expected to enrich the students’ learning process significantly. As defined in [4] “Cooperative learning is a successful teaching strategy in which small teams, each with students of different levels of ability, use a variety of learning activities to improve their understanding of a subject.” The success of this strategy logically follows from applying different cooperative-learning techniques that • promote student learning and academic achievement • increase student retention • enhance student satisfaction with their learning experience • help students develop skills in oral and written communication • develop students' inter-personal skills • promote students’ self-esteem • help to promote diversity • introduce students to a friendly social environment This mutual understanding sets a new paradigm in the cooperation between faculty and students, going beyond that typical for a small liberal-arts campus. It is motivated by the desire of students to learn beyond the scope of the regularlyoffered courses. Such desires used to have the form of “independent study” courses, which limit learning to an individual student. Building a new form of cooperation in learning which allows the sharing of the acquired knowledge and development of skills in using emerging technologies was recognized by our students and resulted in the launch of the AUBG Computer Science Students Union (CSSU). Such type of students’ organization is unique for Bulgaria, and there are very few around the world. This paper shares the experience of learning enhancement achieved through different forms launched by the CSSU under the “soft” supervision of the faculty of Department of the Computer Science. Such supervision mostly focuses on cooperation, rather than on mentoring.

II. SUCCESS FACTORS The success of the CSSU is based on the following factors: A.

Students’ self-organization

The first, and the most important, factor is that this organization was launched, is run and is managed by students, without any management by the faculty and administration. It demonstrates the students’ understanding that they need to learn beyond the regular course offerings, and, at the same time, demonstrates clear understanding of the limitations discussed above. The “soft” supervision by the computer science faculty means that some of the important activities and key topics are initiated and presented by the faculty or by invited lecturers, e.g. Internship Discussion; “How to prepare for Erasmus exchange programs”; “How to write and publish a research paper”; “Extreme Programming”; “Data Mining”; etc. The annual AUBG Computer Science Programming Competitions are organized also together by the Department and the CSSU. Another activity undertaken by CSSU senior members is the role of student advisors – giving advice and limited assistance to junior computer science majors regarding programming assignments and projects. The CSSU officers gain valuable organizing skills backed by the countless officer meetings and discussions, meetings with AUBG administration and representatives of the business outside the university. Along with the other CSSU members, they acquire knowledge and experience that at the same time satisfies and agitates the thirst for advancement and also have lots of fun. B. Encouraging exchange between students and building a cooperative attitude

Development of software is a paradoxical human activity, because it incorporates a highly individual way of working coupled with intensive cooperation. The attitude that one benefits by helping others is another reason that motivates students to cooperate. C. Faculty participation Sharing is not limited to students only. Faculty participates in CSSU events as both contributors and beneficiaries. The CSSU provides a forum where faculty may present their ongoing research and to test how well it is accepted. In an institution offering only a bachelor degree program, there are not too many opportunities to engage students in research activities and, in this way, faculty may find supporters and assistants among the student body. And the opposite is also true – students sharing their experience of using a particular technology, algorithms, approaches, etc. help professors enrich the academic content of their courses with up-to-date practical skills. D. Student-Faculty relationship Student-faculty relationships take a form of cooperation instead of mentoring and supervision. In this way, the barriers of communication are removed, and students feel much easier in approaching faculty in their regular academic relationship. They understand that the faculty is part of the same community. Also, it provides faculty with the opportunity to explain in friendly circumstances the rationale behind particular curriculum decisions and to get students’ feedback. III. FRAMEWORK A. Organizational model

Students understand that the regular curriculum offers content with a long-term impact, such as covering fundamental concepts, principles, and approaches and builds skills to measure critically the quality of the software developed. Training students in practical skills such as applying a particular technology is important, but is not the primary objective of an academic education. The rate of progress in the computer science field is so great that the technology that students used in their first programming class may well be out of use by the time of their graduation. Clear understanding that computer science is a life-long learning activity is another message the AUBG faculty managed to convey to the students. Everyone choosing the profession of the software developer has to develop the skill of learning by him/herself. The dynamics of the launch of new technologies places the problem of efficiently mastering how to apply them among the critical success factors for this profession. Sharing, as opposed to other professions with a longer life-cycle of technologies, is the most efficient way of achieving the up-to-date skills, and still to have time to apply them in the broad area of emerging technologies.

The CSSU grew around a spontaneous desire to share knowledge and experience among a small group of students. And, by recognizing the benefits, this “founding body” realized that they needed to be an established student organization, which would allow them to address all computer science students and also prospective computer science major students. The mission statement of the CSSU states “The CSSU is a student organization of the Department of Computer Science at the American University in Bulgaria. We are the American University in Bulgaria Association for Computing Machinery Student Chapter. ACM is the biggest and oldest computer society in the world. Our mission is to foster a sense of community and belonging among students of computer science, to allow them to build up their skills, and reach out to the computer science community outside of the university. Our activities include regular presentations, practical workshops, social events and projects.” [5]. The CSSU established a form of a membership and elected officers assumed the organization’s administrative responsibilities.

B. Activities The CSSU ACM student chapter activities started with weekly presentations. Normally, the presentations are attended by between 25-30 students, although that number may rise for a particularly “hot” topic. Usually one or two topics are presented for about 30-50 minutes. Some topics, which need more time, are split and presented in several parts at subsequent meetings. This became the most significant part of the chapter’s activities. Throughout the last academic year, there were 11 topics presented by members of the chapter. The topics varied from Game Development and Database Modeling to Cryptography and Ant Colony Optimization. There were introductory presentations on Python, Ruby on Rails, High-Level Shared Languages and AJAX. Those were accompanied by easy-tograsp examples of code. Presentations are also given by faculty members and visitors from other universities and the business sector. These events were developed in conjunction with the idea of promoting further study and research on different Computer Science topics by the chapter members.

Fig. 1: Example poster for a presentation

Another distinctive mark of the presentations is the way they are advertized. Every week, the CSSU officers seek out talented student designers to create posters resembling the topics of the presentations, giving the designers opportunity to show their talent. Fig. 1 is an example. Further, two other categories – workshops and research projects – were also introduced: Workshops are oriented to helping younger students with practical examples of computer science topics such as searching and sorting algorithms, and proved to be highly popular. More recent workshops included the use of technologies like WPF and Silverlight. It was observed that those students who received peers’ assistance managed better in their first programming classes. The regular courses only introduce students to the use of a particular development technology (e.g. MS Visual

Studio), without having time to allow students to fully comprehend and master their usage. In this way many students are discouraged with computer science and move to another major. The workshops help them to overcome any perceived difficulties and to perform better in the development of class assignments and, in general, to advance faster. Other important activities are the sessions for sharing students experience from their activities outside AUBG. As a first event, at the beginning of an academic year, students talk about their summer internships in Bulgaria and Europe; how AUBG courses helped them to complete their tasks; the benefits of having professional experience; etc. Students (and faculty) who attended international IT conferences share their insights too. The following week, the Erasmus Student Exchange Program participants talk about the universities they had visited; different courses and styles of education; new opportunities for development; and interesting sightseeing. These sessions are used as a means of getting first-year students involved in the Computer Science major and to encourage them to pursue their degree in this field. CSSU ACM student chapter activities have been further expanded to include development and management of programming projects. Those are developed for educational purposes or sometimes just for the sake of programming. Some of the completed and ongoing projects are: Student Government Online Elections System; CSSU Live CD; Investment Club Website; and the AUBG Business Department Animation. Participating in a CSSU project provides experience, resources and help from other members and officers and there are sufficient elements of the learning-by-doing approach to allow them to develop as computer science professionals [6]. Research activities give students the opportunity to go beyond the regular curriculum, to experiment new, emerging technologies like GRID, for example. In this form, the role of the department is vital by providing supervision, expertise, equipment, software, etc. To support this kind of activities the Computer Science Department organized a Research and Development laboratory to facilitate innovative research. The laboratory is also the “headquarters” of the CSSU and it is really a place for meetings, discussions, collaboration and cooperative learning. Ideas discussed there are later presented to the broader CSSU audience. The research activities led to yet other CSSU activities – student participation or joint student/professor participation at the AUBG Annual Student-Faculty Research Conference, held regularly since 2007. Some excellent student projects have even resulted in joint student/professor authorship of papers in journals and at conferences. C. Cooperation with the business sector Naturally, the CSSU contacted AUBG computer science alumni for assistance. Software companies run by AUBG

alumni are highly supportive, providing not only material and financial support, but also presenters of “hot” topics. The most attended presentation this year was titled “Look beyond the future of technology” and was delivered by guests from SAP Labs Bulgaria. More than 130 people gathered in the AUBG auditorium to hear the talk. Other software development companies, which are hiring AUBG graduates, are also using the opportunities to collaborate with students before graduation. The typical form of such cooperation is internship, but this form is limited to the time of vacations and to those of the students who are appointed in this form by the companies. The CSSU, in cooperation with the Computer Science department, offers a new form of such acquaintance. Projects, addressing advanced problems and using advanced technologies are developed by AUBG students under combined supervision – by the AUBG faculty and professional experts provided by the company. These projects are not limited to the three months of the internship and may address more complex problems. Also, students with different level of expertise may participate in the projects learning from peers and from mentors. These activities are undertaken in the Research and Development Laboratory, which provides the students with the needed facilities. IV. CURRENT STATUS The success of the CSSU ACM Student Chapter was dramatically underlined last year when the Chapter won the ACM Outstanding Student Chapter Activities Award 20072008 [7]. This is the highest recognition the CSSU organization can get on international scale. It acknowledges the tremendous work the students have done for the past year; it recognizes the contribution the Chapter has given the AUBG community. COS major students, past and present, who have been surveyed and talked to overwhelmingly attest to usefulness of the cooperative learning process that they experienced at AUBG. They are very positive about the benefits that they accrued. One former student (Stefan Angelov) said this: “For me being a member of the CSSU means more than just the formality of laying one's signature on a signup sheet. The union has been established with the purpose of bringing people with interest in computer science together and laying the grounds of a computer science community at AUBG. I started visiting the seminars at the very inception of the organization. For me that meant an opportunity to meet people with more experience than I had at the time and therefore an even greater opportunity to learn more about new technologies, approaches to problem solving, software engineering techniques and many more” [5]. There are many other sentiments like this. V. CONCLUSIONS Close cooperation between the computer science department and the CSSU has made possible splitting the learning

process between curriculum and extra-curricula activities. Workshops, presentations, projects and field trips allow students to comprehend the use of technologies and efficiently complement the curriculum. Building a professional community always creates benefits for all parties. The Department of Computer Science revisits on the regular basis the computer science curriculum. Discussions with CSSU at what extent the existing curriculum covers the Computer Science Body of Knowledge, as defined in the ACM/IEEE Computing Curricula, are extremely helpful both for the students and faculty. The CSSU provides a forum where faculty and students may meet professionals coming from active software companies. They are able to provide first-hand information regarding the state and trends in the market of software. In this way, the CSSU facilitates building a better understanding between these three parties: • Providing information to faculty regarding the “real world” and students wishes, which is used in further curriculum development; • Providing information to students about the rationale behind particular curriculum decisions made by the faculty, and also the support of such decisions from the side of the active professionals proves the necessity of mastering that content. The existence of the CSSU as a form of computer science community for cooperative learning resulted in a stable trend of preserving the number of students majoring in computer science at AUBG, while many universities around the world face the problem of under-enrollment and decreased interest in studying computer science and information technologies disciplines.. ACKNOWLEDGEMENT The authors will like to thank members of the CSSU, both past and present, for all their help, enthusiasm and commitment in making this learning cooperation work so well and to be an outstanding success.

REFERENCES 1. Bonev S., Christozov D., Galletly J. and Karagiozov V. Computer Science Curriculum in a Liberal Arts Institution: Transition from ACM/IEEE Curriculum Model 1992 to 2001, Second International Scientific Conference – Computer Science 2005, Halkidiki, Greece, 2005, pp. 213-217. 2. Karagiozov V., Christozov D., Galletly J. and Bonev S. E-learning in a Liberal Arts Institution: An Open Source Solution –the AUBG Experience, Second International Scientific Conference – Computer Science 2005, Halkidiki, Greece, 2005, pp. 218-223 3. Karagiozov V., Christozov D., Galletly J. and Bonev S. Facilities and Support for Teaching Computer Science at the American University in Bulgaria, Fourth International Scientific Conference – Computer Science 2008, Kavala, Greece, 2008, pp. 635-640 4. Cooperative Learning URL: http://edtech.kennesaw.edu/intech/cooperativelearning.htm 5. CSSU – American University in Bulgaria ACM Student Chapter URL: http://www.cssu-bg.org/

6. Christozov D., Galletly J., Karagiozov V. and Bonev S. Learning by Doing – the Way to Develop Computer Science Professionals, IEEE Conference: Informatics Education - Europe II, Thessaloniki, Greece, 2007, pp. 53-59 7. ACM Student Chapters URL: http://www.acm.org/chapters/students/essay-contest/activities