Student Teacher Interaction While Learning Computer Science: Early Results from an Experiment on Undergraduates

TL;DR

This study investigates how different teaching styles affect undergraduate students' engagement and interest in computer science courses, showing a preference for interactive and relaxed teaching environments.

Contribution

It presents an experimental approach to compare student perceptions and engagement across different teaching styles in a controlled setting.

Findings

Students prefer interactive and relaxed teaching styles.

Engagement measured by body language and feedback was higher in interactive settings.

Teaching style impacts students' interest and willingness to learn.

Abstract

The scope of this paper was to find out how the students in Computer Science perceive different teaching styles and how the teaching style impacts the learning desire and interest in the course. To find out, we designed and implemented an experiment in which the same groups of students (86 students) were exposed to different teaching styles (presented by the same teacher at a difference of two weeks between lectures). We tried to minimize external factors' impact by carefully selecting the dates (close ones), having the courses in the same classroom and on the same day of the week, at the same hour, and checking the number and the complexity of the introduced items to be comparable. We asked for students' feedback and we define a set of countable body signs for their involvement in the course. The results were comparable by both metrics (body language) and text analysis results, students prefer a more interactive course, with a relaxing atmosphere, and are keener to learn in these conditions.