Converting Upper-Division Undergraduate Computer Science Courses Online: Challenges, Student Performance, and Student Perceptions

Abstract

This is a Research Full Paper. While considering offering online Computer Science (CS) courses at non-online programs in response to student demand or program need, how to address the challenges in online teaching and whether the student performance in an online course is compromised are two critical questions. In the literature, we could not find clear answers to these questions, especially for CS courses studied in this research in settings like ours. Converting three upper-division CS courses (operating systems, computer networks, and computer and network security) online in 2020-21 provided us an opportunity to explore the instructional design for online courses, to identify the challenges in online teaching, and to develop the strategies addressing challenges. We use t-tests to compare the student performances in online vs. face-to-face (F2F) sections of each course because our sample sizes fit in the most appropriate range (20 to 40) of t-tests. Box-and-whisker plots are also used to graphically compare student performances. Anonymous student surveys consisting of Likert-scale questions are used to investigate student perceptions in online courses. The analysis of performance and survey data shows no statistically significant performance difference between the online and F2F sections of each course taught by the same instructor as well as generally positive or very positive student feedbacks on teaching and learning in three online CS courses. Focusing on three neutral research questions, our study does not aim to comprehensively compare online and F2F modes or find which mode is better. Regardless what our data analysis indicates, we planned to report it. We hope that our experience and findings may provide useful and evidence-based information to other non-online computing or engineering programs, especially the ones like ours, when they need to consider whether to offer online courses.