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Paper ID #241942018 ASEE Zone IV Conference: Boulder, Colorado Mar 25Title: Inter-Class Collaboration Project to Enhance Learning in ComputerScienceProf. Maria Pantoja, California Polytechnic State University San Luis ObispoMaria Pantoja Computer Engineering Computer Science & Software Engineering Office: 14-211 PhoneNumber: 805-756-1330 Email: [email protected] Homepage: https://cpe.calpoly.edu/faculty/mpanto01/Biography B.S., Universidad Politecnica de Valencia, Spain Ph.D., Santa Clara UniversityResearch Interests High Performance Computing Neural-Electronics Parallel ComputingDr. Zoe Wood Wood, Cal Poly - San Luis Obispoc American Society for Engineering Education, 2018

Collaborative Inter-Class Project to Enhance Learning in Computer ScienceMaria Pantoja and Zoe WoodsComputer Science and Software EngineeringCalifornia State University San Luis Obispo, San Luis Obispo, CAAbstract: Engineers in general and computer scientists in particular are required to work in collaborative,interdisciplinary environments. Communication skills and the ability to work in groups within differentdepartments inside a company are often required for jobs in the industry. To expose students to thiscollaborative experience most engineering programs require a senior design project in the last year ofcourses, however, these capstone type projects risk creating a feeling of disconnect as opposed to anintegrated experience with the prior curriculum. To further improve our students’ collaboration skills andexpose students to the pedagogical benefits of collaborative learning, we designed and implemented acollaboration between two different computer science classes (CS). Our collaborative inter-class projecthas the immediate intention of mutual learning across related but distinct topics, but also to increasestudent retention of knowledge by providing them with a similar experience to what they will encounterin industry. To evaluate the collaborative experience, we use the student lab reports and the results of ananonymous student survey. The survey shows very positive comments about the experience. Based onusing inter-class collaboration for two quarters, we have decided to continue with the practice this yearand we will gather more information in a more detailed survey and aim to make this collaboration apermanent feature in both classes. We also plan to explore how to integrate this kind of inter-classcollaboration in additional upper division computing classes and senior projects.IntroductionCollaborative learning is an educational approach to teaching and learning that involves groups oflearners working together to solve a problem, complete a task or create a product [1]. Research showsvery clear benefits on implementing group activities and group projects [1,2,3] for learning, including inhigher education. In addition, hands-on applied team work exercises have been shown to have benefitsfor all students and for female students in particular [6]. Collaborative environments also prepare studentsfor work in the industry, where companies expect employees to work well with others and tocommunicate with other members of their professional teams and teams within other departments. We,as educators, sought to design an authentic cross class group experience to help students practice workingin teams and experience the relationship of two closely connected but distinct fields of computer science.In this paper we describe an experiment we are conducting at the Computer Science and SoftwareEngineering department. Our collaboration involves two distinct but related courses in ComputerScience, Parallel Programming (PP) and Computer Graphics (CG). While both class contents areessentially unique, in reality most computer graphics problems are executed on Graphical ProcessingUnits (GPUs) which are heavily studied and used in PP; and many of the very interesting problems in PPare CG related. We felt an inter-class experience would allow students to practice working on a handson project as a team similar to what they may experience in industry.

In general, the collaboration was structured with the two instructors jointly leading the inter-classcollaboration over a two-week period, including both a theoretical and hands-on lab experience. For thefirst week the individual classes come together in the same classroom and on one day they receive afocused introduction to Parallel Programming and another day they receive a focused introduction toComputer Graphics. In the second week the students work in groups of mixed CG and PP students andwork on a lab together that consists in two parts, one with a more graphics related focus while the otherwith a more parallel focused implementation but both closely related in terms of general task.In our experience as educators we have had students express mixed feelings about group projects; somestudents enjoy them but some other dislike them. The main reasons many students express a dislike forgroup projects is the unbalanced work that the group members do, leaving some students with the feelingof doing all the work themselves while the rest of the group members do very little. Similarly, studentsthat do not contributed to the group ultimately learn very little. There is a good deal of research aboutgroup projects and how to make group projects a better experience for students. In [4,5] a role separationis introduced and students are given specific task/roles to better adapt for different personalities. Toimprove the team work experience of our students, we did create teams of students but with two mainroles (leader/teacher, learners) but the role assigned to the students are swapped during the experiencewith some of the students being the leaders/teachers for one lab and then this role will be reversed on thesecond lab assignment. This way students are forced to take different roles during the collaborationdiminishing the probabilities of any of them doing significant less than the rest of the group; andincreasing the chances to encourage the participation of students and their different preferences. The goalis for each group of mixed student teams, CG and PP, to trade-off the leadership and learner role andcommunicate their expertise to the other group.In this article, we present a detailed description of the implementation of the inter-class collaboration,the results of the collaboration via lab results and student surveys and our conclusions and ongoing workrelated to this collaboration.Section 1. ImplementationThe two classes which participated in this inter-class collaboration are both upper division computerscience technical electives and each have approximately 40 students enrolled. For the collaboration, theclass rosters are combined for one week, with assigned small 3-4 student teams, each containing at leastone student from each class. The collaboration occurred during the term of the class on week seven of aten-week quarter system class. We did choose week seven so students have enough expertise on theirown fields of study.Collaboration components :1. Theoretical. For one week the two classes meet together, where one day they receive a focusedintroduction to Parallel Programming and another day they receive a focused introduction toComputer Graphics. The material covered is related to the use of the GPU, but from the twoperspectives of the sub-fields, with the faculty noting shared and divergent goals, perspectivesand vocabulary. The purpose of these combined lectures is to give students a shared backgroundrelated to the main concepts of each field. The expectation is that specific details will emergeand be tackled in the labs (ideally by the explanations of the student leader for that specific lab.

2. Hand-on experience. The lab portion of the collaboration spans two weeks. The first weekstudents solve a problem using a traditional CG implementation and development tools, while thesecond week the students solve the same problem but using only the PP development tools. Thelabs were carefully chosen so it makes sense to have both implementations. For this reason, weselected an image processing problem, image blur, which is relatively easy to understand andimplement in both settings. We also wanted a hands-on example and blurring an image, reducingthe original edge content, has many different desired uses. For example, by blurring thebackground of an image we highlight the object we want to focus on, also by blurring an objectwe can get a fluorescent effect of the object of interest. At the basic level, image blur mainlyinvolves a series of matrix by vector multiplications and the algorithm can be efficientlyimplemented in computer graphics and parallel programming development settings (for exampleusing GLSL shaders and then openCL or CUDA).3. Reflection. A culminating document is required in the form of a laboratory report. Teams arerequired to work together to solve the two labs. We ensure collaboration by requiring eachstudent to submit a lab report with students expected to be able to answer questions about anypart of the lab by the TA or instructor. Students report computational timings for bothimplementations (CG and PP) and explanations for the differences in these timings.Section II ResultsTo assess the students, experience with the inter-class collaboration we used an anonymous survey. Thequestions primarily focus on student experience but also include comprehension questions to provide asample measure of learning outcomes. The experience questions are intended to provide us withfeedback about the student’s perspectives and also to provide students with an opportunity to reflect ontheir role in the experience. The following is a list of the survey questions students received at the endof the class:i.What is something that CUDA and GLSL have in common?ii.Did the joint teaching experience help you understand the GPU from multiple perspectives?(Yes/No/Maybe answer)iii. What worked best for you about the cross teaching experience (e.g. lectures, teammatesexplaining things, office hours, or ?)iv. Reflecting on the cross-teaching experience what did you contribute to your team?v.For CPE 471 (CG) students: Are you more likely to want to learn more about parallelprograming after this exercise? (Yes/No/Maybe answer)vi. For CPE 419 (PP) students: Are you more likely to want to learn more about computer graphicsapplications after this exercise? (Yes/No/Maybe answer)vii. Any suggestions for future exercises of this type? or other comments you would like to sharewith us? SUBMIT