Changing Teaching Assistant's Behavior Based on Learning Support Strategies for Programming Exercise

Abstract

In this research, we devised learning support strategies to change how teaching assistants (TAs) for basic university courses in information technology (IT) behave toward students during programming classes. Based on learning support strategies, we developed and evaluated a TA support system that presents student learning situations on mobile devices. In basic IT courses, a TA support system is often used to help and guide individual students. To help TAs using such support, a previous study visualizes the learning situation and offers advice. However, support in addition to presenting learning situations to the TA should include guidelines for interaction with the students. In order to provide adequate support to students, we propose learning support strategies for TAs. In practical computer science exercises, TAs mainly advise and answer questions from students. However, it is not clear how TAs could best support students. Therefore, we propose the following learning support three types of strategies: Hope, Priority, Motivation. Futhermore, we researched what learning support from the TA was desired by the students and developed a TA support system that presents learning support strategies. According to each learning support strategy, the classroom's map governs seat colors for each student who is the recipient of advice. The TA prioritizes helping the students presented by the learning support strategy as mapped by the seat charts. The system we developed was practiced in class, and as a result we found that even students who wanted to work on sophisticated content did not consider the teacher and TA unnecessary.