Think aloud protocol has traditionally been used to probe thinking and problem solving skills. In a series of student interview sessions where think aloud protocol was used to study student problem solving skills in mathematical induction at the University of British Columbia, a significant percentage of the students had difficulty verbalizing their thoughts while solving a problem. At other times, students felt pressured in coming up with a solution, or they were afraid of making incorrect steps and wanted to be certain before they actually articulated their thought process. As a result, a number of interviews resulted in almost complete silence and little was gained. To this end, we developed an enhanced, scenario based think-aloud protocol, designed to engage subjects during the interviews without having them feeling pressured or having to perform in front of an interviewer. In the process, the subject becomes less and less conscious of being studied and becomes more immersed in the actual problem solving with her own thoughts and ideas. In this paper we will describe this augmented think aloud protocol, and discuss our experiences of using this tool to assess mathematical induction reasoning in computer science students. A number of essential skills are identified through these interviews that may help instructors identify improved pedagogical methods for teaching the subject.

Instructors modify offerings of their courses in response to changes in emphasis, curriculum, student preparation, resource limitations, and problems with previous offerings. Changes also involve assessment instruments such as assignments and exams, ensuring that students are indeed learning the material, rather than relying on "information" from previous offerings. However, instructors are seldom guided by meaningful and useful data in making these changes. Instead, most rely on their "gut feelings", and many changes are made in an ad hoc manner, with minimal supporting data to assess whether the changes contribute positively or negatively to student learning. This paper reports on our experience with the transformation of an undergraduate database course at the University of British Columbia (UBC), using best practices from education research. We provide examples of the types of data that can be obtained through various instruments, and can be used in an objective analysis to affect course changes. If such data collection methods are put into place before changes to a course are anticipated, instructors will be better prepared to assess how students are affected by those changes. This paper is organized as follows. Sections 1 and 2 provide background information about a process model for course transformation. Section 3 describes the course being studied. Section 4 shows different types of instruments that can be used for data collection. Section 5 provides examples of the data collected, and the analysis that can be performed using that information. Section 6 describes our plans for course transformation based on the data collected.

Most students see exams as a stressful experience, having crammed as much as they possibly can and hoping that the material they have studied would indeed be on the exams, and the material that they did not have the time to study for, nor understand, would be overlooked by their professors. At the same time, instructors see exams as formal assessments of student learning. Exams are seldom thought of as a learning experience. In this paper, we report our experiences in the use of two-stage exams as a learning experience for the students in two different courses. In a two-stage exam, students write an exam individually, then they rewrite the same exam in collaboration with three or four other students. One of the main objectives is to encourage peer instruction and promote learning even during the exams. Students obtain immediate feedback during the exam, and initial results have shown that this type of exam format produces some positive effects in later assessment.

The UBC CS Science Education Initiative (CSSEI) has resulted in a number of research projects. New teaching methods and student assessment instruments are introduced to engage student learning and evaluations of their understanding. In this paper, we report four of these recent initiatives and their initial findings.