This paper reports on a study that examines the learning behaviors and characteristics of students in a mobile applications computer programming class that adopted a "flipped" learning style. By harvesting learning analytics data from a learning management system, we created visualizations of work intensity to explore temporal patterns of students' behavior and then correlate them with the students' performance. Findings indicate that low, medium, and high performing students tend to access learning materials late with work intensity spiking on the lecture day, specifically during the lecture session. While high and low performing students show no difference in temporal access to material, medium performing students demonstrate the greatest degree of vibrancy regarding course content material access. Further a discussion of implications and insights on procrastination in the context of flipped classrooms are included.
Keywords: Flipped course, Computer science instruction, Learning, Moodle, Visualization, Mobile application development education, Learning analytics, Learning with video, Procrastination
IntroductionDespite a great deal of effort in supporting learning among students in university-based computer science (CS) courses, many students struggle. In a multi-national study of failure rates among students in introductory computer programming classes at the university level, it was found that even small improvements in failure rates could have a great deal of impact on the field. The authors of this study (Porter, Guzdial, McDowell, & Simon, 2013) state "Assuming that the pass rate found in this survey is representative, approximately 650,000 students every year do not pass CS1. In this light, just a small improvement of the pass rate of CS1 would cause a gigantic increase in the number of students passing (and perhaps eventually graduating) -a one percent increase in the pass rate means 20,000 students extra passing CS1" (p. 35). The authors note that even small changes in the pass rates of students taking entry level computer science courses would impact tens of thousands of students who might otherwise be discouraged by their struggles and leave computer science pursuits altogether.However, there have been laudable efforts in the reform of computer science instruction. Pair programming, media computation, and peer instruction practices have been found to greatly enhance students' success rates and increase student retention in the © The Author(s). 2018 Open Access This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made. AlJarrah et al. International Journal of Educational Technology in Higher Education (2018) field (Bennedsen & Caspersen, 2007). Studies focused on...
