Using POGIL to teach students to be better problem solvers (abstract only)

Abstract

POGIL is a learning method that encourages students to learn coursework material in cooperative groups. Instead of passively listening to a traditional lecture, POGIL students work together on activities that guide students to discover programming concepts and algorithms for themselves. For example, instead of being told in lecture that a return statement ends the execution of a method, students might be asked what happens if two lines in their program are reversed (so that a line of code appears after the return statement). This emphasis on the process of discovery teaches students to become better problem solvers. POGIL has been used for over 15 years in science classrooms, where studies have shown it to be more effective than traditional lectures, measured both in student mastery of the material and in student retention.This poster provides examples of how traditional programming assignments can be transformed into POGIL lessons that emphasize problem solving and critical thinking skills. A POGIL activity on loops has students working through iterations of Newton's method by hand before writing the code. Critical thinking questions guide students to manipulate the code to experiment with infinite loops, initialization statements and conditionals. Two other activities on recursion and writing pseudocode are detailed on the poster. Information on facilitating a POGIL activity and writing your own POGIL activities can be found online at http://pogil.org/resources. Additional examples of computer science POGIL activities can be found at http://cspogil.org.