Interactive Peer-Led Code Reviews In CS2 Curricula
Ryan Rybarczyk, Lingma Lu Acheson · 2019
Previous work demonstrated an effective strategy on how to teach two programming languages (Java and C++) side-by-side in a Computer Science II (CS2) course. The goal of this approach was twofold: first, to stress the importance of programming language selection as part of a career preparation module; secondly, to improve the overall success and satisfaction of the students. The results of this work led to additional questions, including how students (peers) could be leveraged to act as instructors in laboratory settings to aid in a peer-led learning exercise. One of the unique challenges associated with CS2 curricula is the varying degree of student experiences and expertise when entering the course. Course surveys have demonstrated that a subset of the student population enter the course with significant programming experience, while others report no prior experience with programming or programming languages. It is therefore the role of the instructor, to find the proper balance within the course in order to satisfy all students' learning needs. In the original work it was indicated, via student post-completion surveys, that peer-led discussion of coding "best practices" could improve overall student outcomes. This survey provided the motivation for this paper. In this paper, we propose using interactive peer-led code reviews to help introduce the students to widely accepted practices found throughout industry while allowing them to better master the material through a shared learning experience. We provide an outline for how this can be achieved in an existing course structure and discuss the outcomes from this study.