Teach the Class

Motivation

Students often have preconceived ideas of what Computer Science is: for instance the trope of a lonely coder hacking out a game, but that is far from the truth. Computer science is a multi disciplinary field that requires collaboration and communication, including discussions about the ethical implications of the technology being built. We as teachers try to inform students about the breath of this field, but it often ignored because we're the "adults in the room"... However, if a student tells another student... well they're all ears. As an additional benefit there's a preponderance of evidence that peer instruction is an effective teaching strategy that can increase student performance, including in STEM fields.[1]

Summary

Teach the Class is a structured assignment where the students teach each other about an area of computer science and describes the applicability of computer science in other disciplines. This assignment also requires the students to think about and discuss the broader ethical and societal impacts of the technologies they use and may ultimately build and shape.

Topics

The goals of this assignment are:

• Describe and discuss current topics relevant to Computer Science.

• Use correct technical vocabulary to describe the topic to the class

• Lead a reflective discussion about ethical and other considerations on that topic.

• Practice public speaking (both as a presenter and as a participant).

• Use a framework to critique other presentations in a constructive manner.

Standards

• 2-IC-20: Compare tradeoffs associated with computing technologies that affect people's everyday activities and career options

• 2-IC-21: Discuss issues of bias and accessibility in the design of existing technologies.

• 3A-IC-24: Evaluate the ways computing impacts personal, ethical, social, economic, and cultural practices.

• 3A-IC-26: Demonstrate ways a given algorithm applies to problems across disciplines.

• 3B-IC-25: Evaluate computational artifacts to maximize their beneficial effects and minimize harmful effects on society.

• 3B-IC-26: Evaluate the impact of equity, access, and influence on the distribution of computing resources in a global society.

Audience

The intended audience is Middle school, High School, or early college - any course where students are just learning about computer science and its applications.

Difficulty

• This is not a difficult assignment, but does require the students to spend time researching and working in a group. Some students may feel nervous presenting to the class.

• The assignment takes:

  • 1 class period to introduce the project and assign groups and presentation times

  • Each group takes 20 minutes to present. Typically we do 2-3 per presentation day.

  • Students should expect to spend 2-3 hours meeting with their groups, researching the topic, and preparing and practicing their presentation.

Strengths

The beauty of this assignment is that not only does it push the STUDENTS to think about the bigger picture of CS, they start to see how CS is everywhere and in a lot of disciplines that they might not have though about before.

Further, computing is in practically every thing we do - and it’s important that students understand what computing’s impact is on us as humans and our society.

Finally, this assignment also reinforces communication, collaboration, and critiquing skills in a CS classroom. The scaffolded critiquing skills, are a particular strength of this assignment.

Weaknesses (and potential solutions)

Many things could go wrong with students presenting to other students. In part, it's good to embrace when things go wrong as it is part of the student learning experience. However, a few things can mitigate these issues:

• Students may present incomplete or incorrect information. Students questions to lead the discussion may not prompt the class to think about larger ethical and social implications of the technologies.

  • As a teacher you could have students turn in the presentations early (as a draft) and review their information, course correcting as necessary.

• Students may not critique with the best of intentions.

  • As the teacher, you collect the critiques and review them before sending them anonymously to the students.

• Group dynamics in preparing or delivering the presentation.

• Individuals for whom presenting in front of a class is extremely difficult.

• Taking the time to fit this into a class.

  • The benefits of this assignment honestly outweigh this issue.

Dependencies

The prerequisites for this assignment are:

• Students knowing how to effectively research a project

• Students completing the Pre-work assignment

  • Watch the Map of Computer Science and answer 2 questions.

  • Watch The Magic Ingredient that Brings Pixar Movies to Life and practice critique

Variants

This is an flexible assignment, admittedly one where the students will get out of it what they put into it (both in terms of preparing and executing the presentation, and participating and critiquing as an audience member).

This could be adjusted in a number of ways

• Whether a sample presentation is given in class to model what is expected of the students.

• The topic of the sample presentation.

• The presentation group size

• How independently the students research and prepare the presentations. For instance, for younger students, it could be useful to guide students on topics, provide a curated set of topics and sites students can use in their research, and/or require drafts of slide decks and presentations.

• How long the presentations are expected to be.

• How many questions the presenters must ask the audience.

• Students could do research work while in class or as homework or as an in class project.

• Grading rubrics or evaluation techniques.

It is not recommended to do the following:

• limit the areas of CS a student may present on, or pre-assign the areas to students. Part of the beauty of this assignment is that the students do get to present on a topic that is interesting to them, they will be more engaged because this choice is authentic and meaningful to them. In some cases it can be helpful to the students to scope the area of exploration - for instance if a student says Human Computer Interaction, perhaps narrowing this down to creating Accessible Systems or HCI in a certain field (like medicine).

• Remove the critique/exit ticket as this helps students stay focused during the presentation, as well as gives peer feedback to the presenters in a scaffolded way.

• Because this assignment is specifically designed to have students discuss the implications of each area of CS, I would recommend that it not be assigned as a video presentation with no in class conversation.

Resources

Nifty presentation:

• Slides

Teacher Materials:

• • Teach the class Lesson plan

  • Teach the class Slides

  • Student Exemplars (college level - for teachers only)

    1. Graphics and Vision

    2. Robotics

    3. Security

Student Materials

• Teach the class Pre-work

• Teach the class Assignment

• Teach the class Exemplar slides and video

• Teach the class Student worksheet (used after the teacher shows or demonstrates an exemplar)

• Teach the class Exit Ticket (used when students are teaching other students)

[1] Active learning increases student performance in science, engineering, and mathematics | Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.1319030111