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PollEverywhere in the Classroom

By: Punita Bhansali

Whether in the synchronous online classroom or in-person setting, PollEverywhere is one of my favorite tools to encourage participation and assess student learning. PollEverywhere is a web-based response tool that allows instructors to pose questions, survey attendees, and even gamify the classroom. While it’s not solely used for educational purposes, here I will discuss how I use it in my classroom. Some examples of activities one can utilize on the PollEverywhere webpage include multiple choice questions, word clouds, open-ended questions, emotion scales, surveys, short answers, discussion, icebreakers. Students participate in the activity and results are presented on the board in real-time. The site is user-friendly and gives students the options of responding via text or in their browsers.

I generally start every class session with a PollEverywhere activity. While there are various activities to choose from, I mostly use the Competition and Open-ended activity options. I utilize the Competition feature to review material from the previous week or from the asynchronous online lecture in my hybrid courses, because it allows me to reward the winner of each week’s game with a point on the next exam. This incentivizes students to engage and participate and simultaneously creates a fun environment. Through this weekly activity, I can identify which concepts I should spend more time covering, and students get a sense of where the gaps are in their understanding of the material. Additionally, I use the Open-ended question feature as a way for students to submit their opinions. I pose open-ended questions on PollEverywhere so every student can verbalize their interpretation of a concept anonymously and the answers all appear on the screen immediately. A PollEverywhere question can also serve as a segue to a more in-depth conversation about a topic of interest. Sometimes I even use it to gauge students’ feelings (ex. How do you feel about taking this course?). All the activities can be saved, so an instructor can reuse a competition game or question every semester.

Here is the link for this tool: https://www.polleverywhere.com/. If you have any questions, please reach out to me at pbhansali@qcc.cuny.edu.

Applying QM Rubric Course Review

By: Humberto Morales

As described on the Quality Matters’ website, “Quality Matters is the global organization leading quality assurance in online and innovative digital teaching and learning environments.” Their mission is to “Promote and improve the quality of online education and student learning.”

I was very excited to take the course Applying the QM Rubric (APPQMR) because it gave me the opportunity to improve the quality of my online course and provide a better online experience for my students. My goals for taking the course were to work on my course and receive feedback from the QM’s instructors. I did not receive chance to work on areas of my own course. Instead, over the course of two weeks, I was asked to go through a sample course and determine whether the QM Rubric was applied correctly. I find that it was a better learning experience because there were a multitude of scenarios that I would not have come across by working on my own course.

I loved the course overall. However, I rushed through the course, and I did not have much time to explore outside the required work. The course was in asynchronous format which allowed me to start the course whenever I wanted in the week, however, the due date of the coursework was due at the end of the week regardless of when the course was started. It was very intensive, and I wish that the course was over a longer period of time. Also, it did not help that the course was scheduled during finals week. It would have been best if the course was offered at a less busy time. If I was to do it again, I would ensure that I have enough time to go through the material at a slower pace. I feel that there was a lot more to learn and I missed out.

I found the course to be helpful generally and I am grateful to have received the opportunity to improve. While I am still working on revisions for my course, taking the Quality Matters APPQMR course has improved the coursework I have so far.

The Case for CS50

Dr. Daniel Garbin, Department of Mathematics and Computer Science

Since their introduction in the first part of the twentieth century, computers have seen a tremendous progress. During the early days, a computer used to occupy an entire room and its resources were shared by several people also known as users, each working on a terminal that consisted of a typewriter for writing programs. In those early days, computers had to perform computations for the brunt of it. The computations themselves evolved from working directly with the computer’s circuits to eventually written instructions using a programming language. The reader should be warned that not all things mentioned above, such as terminal or programming language originated at the same time. In turn, they were invented during the various stages in the evolution of computers. As they progressed, their sizes shrunk. Eventually computers received a screen, then a small pointing device resembling a mouse, and various other peripherals. Usage has expanded greatly and, with that, more and more people are using computers and should or need to learn how to program them.

In this short essay, we would like to focus on a particular programming environment. In order to write new programs we need to use a programming environment which itself is a program or in modern language an app. The type of coding environment usually depends on the computer manufacturer, in particular the operating system the computer runs. On most computers, the programming environment must be at least in part upgraded, by installing certain tools which need not be present by default. For example, if I teach an introductory programming class using the language C++ (a very popular programming language), I must provide students with at least 2 pages of instructions on how to setup the environment. Part of the instructions are for those using the Microsoft Windows operating system and part are for Apple’s Mac OS. (On purpose I am leaving out computers running on the Linux operating system as its users are already familiar with programming environments.) These instructions are quite involved and may come with possible surprises not covered in instructions. Installing such programming environment may be rather daunting to the beginner of programming. While we want that eventually students are able to handle installation and upkeep of such environments, it seems better to wait on this as to allow students to focus on writing their first programs. In addition to these, the labs in which programming classes are taught also need to perform regular upkeep of the programming environments.

The alternative to having students handle the programming environment installation “ordeal” is to use an online (or cloud) integrated development environment (IDE). In such an environment, one need not to worry about installations and upkeeping of programs, as such matters are handled by the administrators of the site. In addition to this, security features (such as sandboxing), which prevent users from running malicious programs, is also the responsibility of the owner of the site. While this is not an easy task, one cannot go without it since any time you allow users to run a program on your computer, there is a chance of mal intent. Before using the current online IDE, myself and a few of my colleagues from the Mathematics and Computer Science department thought about hosting our own cloud using the servers at Queensborough Community College. One of the great obstacles that we faced had to do with security. For such reason, we decided to look elsewhere.

For the past few years. I have used Harvard’s ide.cs50io. The choice of CS50 as opposed to others is due to several factors. Despite being cost-free to students and faculty, it has been very reliable and used by many organizations. The CS50 IDE has a rather minimalist design and consist of the main features of an IDE: A file organizer for storing your files, a text editor for writing code, and a terminal pane for running your programs. In addition to writing programs in the text editing pane -- a highly minimalist word processor -- one can use the more advanced (but arguably better) editor called Vim directly in the terminal pane.

Aside from being cost-free and easy to use, the CS50 IDE has many other useful features, in particular the share of one’s workspace. Each time I teach a programming class, from the very beginning of the semester I ask the students to share their workspace with me. This allows me to check on their work as well as download their work. I find this extremely useful when grading assignments as well as during exams. It is mostly due to this cloud-based feature that I have decided to administer all tests and final exams through this platform. Another useful feature is the file revision history. One can use it to see if the a given program was typed by the student or uploaded. The latter one may raise suspicions that the student possibly lifted the code instead of writing it.

By simplifying what one needs to do before writing their first program, CS50 allows beginners to focus on the programming part solely. Additionally, it organizes the work in one place which is easily accessible even from a tablet computer. The codes are safely stored and every time you come back to CS50 you will find in the same state as the last time you used it.

Happy coding!

E-Learning Newsletter

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PollEverywhere in the Classroom

Applying QM Rubric Course Review

The Case for CS50