Icon for: Celine Latulipe

CELINE LATULIPE

UNC Charlotte
Public Discussion

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  • Icon for: Brian Drayton

    Brian Drayton

    Co-Principal Investigator
    May 17, 2016 | 09:55 a.m.

    I am really intrigued by this strategy. I can see especially how it’d be great for freshmen — how about higher-level students?

  • Icon for: Celine Latulipe

    Celine Latulipe

    Lead Presenter
    Associate Professor
    May 17, 2016 | 01:02 p.m.

    We have used the technique in freshmen, sophomore and junior level classes. In junior classes, we have used both lightweight teams and project teams. So student A may be on a lightweight team with students b, c, and d, but then on a project team with students m, s and t. They can try an activity in their lightweight team, then use that skill in their project team. We think that students in lightweight teams practice communication skills so much, and this scaffolds their team-work skills for higher-level courses that have more medium-weight or heavy-weight teams.

  • Icon for: Elc Estrera

    Elc Estrera

    Facilitator
    Senior Research Analyst
    May 17, 2016 | 10:55 a.m.

    This looks like a great application of social learning to computer science. I am curious about how the literature informed the development of the Lightweight Teams approach to learning. Is there literature that says the traditional way of learning in computer science lectures (and other college-level lectures) is ineffective?

  • Icon for: Celine Latulipe

    Celine Latulipe

    Lead Presenter
    Associate Professor
    May 17, 2016 | 01:07 p.m.

    Our motivation was encountering many students in upper year courses who didn’t seem to know how to program, and who seemed to hate programming. There is literature that shows students’ brain activity is lower during powerpoint lectures than during sleep. The flipped class structure gives everyone the time and space to actively engage with the material, and to get help and feedback from peers, TAs and professors in the classroom when they don’t understand something. They can also watch content video at home as often as needed, at whatever speed needed.

  • Icon for: Elc Estrera

    Elc Estrera

    Facilitator
    Senior Research Analyst
    May 18, 2016 | 12:23 p.m.

    That’s helpful to know. Thanks Celine!

  • Icon for: Steve Bean

    Steve Bean

    Enterprise Director
    May 17, 2016 | 12:50 p.m.

    We’re using what we call a “Cohort Approach” to hosting the local community college’s intro CS11M course at Digital NEST:
    http://stemforall2016.videohall.com/presentatio.... We recruit predominantly Latino college and high school students to classes that are under-enrolled at the local college and then do tutoring and promote the learning community as a social support. But I don’t think our cohort approach is anywhere near as sophisticated as your “lightweight teams.” Can you detail the key elements of your approach and let us know if you’re producing a resource that people can use to replicate it? BTW, I suggest you change the term – “lightweight” doesn’t do justice to the power of the social learning support you’re bringing to a subject that’s intimidating for so many students!

  • Icon for: Celine Latulipe

    Celine Latulipe

    Lead Presenter
    Associate Professor
    May 17, 2016 | 01:16 p.m.

    Detailed elements:
    - Split students into teams before the semester starts.
    - Create a seating plan, so teams sit together.
    - Have students do prep work prior to class
    - Create active learning activities in class that require students to discuss and work together
    - Make sure the activities they do in class are worth very little of the final grade, so there is no stress if a particular team member doesn’t contribute on a given day
    - Keep the classroom environment positive and challenging
    - Don’t require teams to meet outside of class.

    Lightweight refers to the fact that there isn’t a big grade associated with the team’s efforts. I like it, but am open to suggestions…

  • Icon for: Nicole Reitz-Larsen

    Nicole Reitz-Larsen

    Facilitator
    Educator
    May 18, 2016 | 01:29 a.m.

    Thank you for sharing your video. It is great to see that students are collaborating on their work and have a classroom environment that is conducive to teamwork.

    I’m curious to find out what different types of activities you are covering and what kind of professional development do you offer to teachers. (I know it is hard for some teachers o step to the side to be more of a facilitator)

    How long have you been working on this project and how may teachers and students have been a part of the project.

    What kinds of roles do you assign students as they work in their groups so that all participants are engaged.

  • Icon for: Celine Latulipe

    Celine Latulipe

    Lead Presenter
    Associate Professor
    May 18, 2016 | 09:54 p.m.

    We have been doing lightweight teams in flipped intro CS classes since 2013. There have been 3 different faculty involved in teaching these two intro programming courses (myself, Bruce Long and more recently, Manuel Perez Quinones). Other faculty at UNC Charlotte also use this technique in intro web programming, in HCI classes and it is being used in Database classes and a few graduate classes as well. So, many students at our institution have experienced this, and many undergrad students have now experienced this structure of flipped class with lightweight teams multiple different times. We believe it is starting to change their expectations of what higher education should be and what their role is in their own learning.

    As for roles on teams, we don’t assign roles, but let that emerge organically. Because the teams are lightweight and aren’t about doing a big project or assignment, there often doesn’t need to be a team leader per se.

  • Icon for: Jeff Forbes

    Jeff Forbes

    Facilitator
    Associate Professor of the Practice
    May 18, 2016 | 01:27 p.m.

    Thanks for providing such an engaging overview. How do you determine which aspects of the intervention were effective at promoting improved performance in CS2? The lightweight teams, flipped classroom, MediaComp, and gamification could all contribute in different ways.

  • Icon for: Celine Latulipe

    Celine Latulipe

    Lead Presenter
    Associate Professor
    May 18, 2016 | 09:48 p.m.

    Yep, absolutely impossible to tease out which part made the difference in improving performance in the follow-up course – it’s likely a combination of all of these things. These things all work together in a pretty-tightly integrated way (although the teams and flipped classroom could be done without MediaComp, and without gamification). In future semesters we are hoping to have flipped lightweight teams classes for intro CS sections without MediaComp so that we can compare, and tease these factors out.

    For now, the fact that our students self-report high levels of engagement and report liking being on the teams gives us some suggestion that the lightweight teams is a core factor at work.

  • Icon for: Helen Teague

    Helen Teague

    A cyber-ensemble of inversion, immersion, collaborative workspaces, query and media-making in learning
    May 18, 2016 | 05:33 p.m.

    Thank you for teaching me something totally new with lightweight teams… I was motivated to search the term and GScholar and found great research support to reference. The socio-cultural aspect free from assessment pressure is so appealing. One quick question: must lightweight teams be situated in a classroom environment? Might they also be organized in volunteer, sports, or community service teams?

  • Icon for: Celine Latulipe

    Celine Latulipe

    Lead Presenter
    Associate Professor
    May 18, 2016 | 09:55 p.m.

    We haven’t tried lightweight teams in other environments, but I’d certainly be interested in doing that! Great idea!

  • Icon for: Helen Teague

    Helen Teague

    A cyber-ensemble of inversion, immersion, collaborative workspaces, query and media-making in learning
    May 18, 2016 | 11:00 p.m.

    Thank you for your reply, Dr. Latuipe. We have an intergenerational Town Hall meeting that connects university students in grassroots political involvement with 5 generations of voters to draft recommendations for our state legislature. The team activities in your video reminded me of the relationship-building activities our 5 generations of participants do together… I am going to continue to learn more about lightweight teams—perhaps there are indeed exciting connections!

  • Icon for: Barbara Ericson

    Barbara Ericson

    Senior Research Scientist
    May 19, 2016 | 03:34 p.m.

    I like the idea of placing students into lightweight teams to work together in class on things like clicker questions. Do you find that the team members tend to also work together on team projects?

  • Icon for: Celine Latulipe

    Celine Latulipe

    Lead Presenter
    Associate Professor
    May 22, 2016 | 09:59 p.m.

    We don’t have team projects in this class, but what we have observed is that these teams often become long-term friend groups. We have observed groups of students that we randomly put together into lightweight teams hanging out together socially on campus a year or two after they were first put together. We also see these students opting to work with each other in group projects in other classes.

  • Icon for: Elc Estrera

    Elc Estrera

    Facilitator
    Senior Research Analyst
    May 19, 2016 | 04:06 p.m.

    Another excellent feature of the Lightweight Teams model is the cost, which to me looks like $0 or really close! Is this the case? Are there costs that are not readily apparent (e.g., training instructors to be effective facilitators of lightweight teams)?

  • Icon for: Celine Latulipe

    Celine Latulipe

    Lead Presenter
    Associate Professor
    May 22, 2016 | 10:01 p.m.

    Yes, absolutely. There is about a one-hour time cost up front to put students into groups and create a seating plan, but there isn’t really any other cost to this at all. I think the trick to this is that we are reducing social anxiety and letting students work socially. They want to socialize anyway, and we give them a structure in which to do it. We’ve done it in active learning classrooms (which work great, but are expensive to build), but we’ve also done it in regular stadium-type classrooms or rectangular classes with rows of desks.

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