Paul Denny - Tertiary Teaching Excellence Teaching Profile

Senior Tutor, Department of Computer Science, The University of Auckland

Teaching Computing

My teaching career had a less than ideal beginning. The classroom itself was quite normal – a small 24-seat tutorial room with a whiteboard. By the end of the fourth week of the course more than 40 students were attending. Students sat on the concrete floor, stood around the edges of the room, and spilled out into the hall. As a new teacher I wanted to honour their willingness to learn, but I had no formal teaching training and only enthusiasm and intuition to rely on. I felt an obligation to evaluate and develop my teaching ability and effectiveness. As a result, over the last ten years I have pioneered ways to foster communities of students engaged in online collaborative learning, initiated strategies to include and celebrate students with diverse backgrounds, and designed and developed learning software used around the world.

I teach introductory computer science at The University of Auckland. These classes are typically very large, and it would not be uncommon to have 600 students split across three lecture streams. Learning to program is difficult, and it requires incredible precision and patience. Unlike humans, who can make sense of essays containing multiple spelling and grammatical errors, a computer is completely unforgiving – the smallest errors can render a program unusable. While the science of computing is heavily theory based, the practice is very much an art form, requiring creativity and experience. For a long time I have been interested in ways of motivating students, particularly in very large classes, to engage with concepts that are difficult.

Teaching Philosophy

I believe that involving students in community oriented activities, in which they are responsible for creating and sharing learning resources, is an effective way to promote deep learning. It helps build self-awareness of learning processes and gives students a sense of control over their learning. I integrate activities and assessments into my courses that foster the development of such communities. This kind of engagement emphasizes higher-order cognitive processes such as evaluation, reflection and critical thinking. It helps to transform students from being passive receptors of information, a natural consequence of the traditional lecture environment, to becoming active and critical members of a community engaged in the process of constructing knowledge.

PeerWise

For many students entering university today, using the web to access information is second nature. They are familiar with the value of user-generated content, the lifeblood of Web 2.0. They watch videos on YouTube, and use social networking tools such as Bebo, MySpace and Facebook. As an extension of my teaching philosophy I created an online learning tool, PeerWise, which aims to exploit the familiarity students have with social software while engaging them in a learning community.

PeerWise allows students to create, share, critique and answer multiple-choice questions in a web-based environment. Students create an original multiple-choice question stem, one correct answer with up to four distracters, an associated model answer and a clear written explanation, which can then be answered and critiqued by their peers. This process supports student learning in a number of ways.

In choosing a topic and composing a question, students must focus on the learning outcomes of the course. They need to consider specific misconceptions when designing effective distracters, and writing an accompanying explanation for their question requires students to express their understanding of a topic in their own words.

When answering questions on PeerWise, students receive immediate feedback on their answers and are encouraged to make critical judgments regarding the contributions of their peers, bringing important analysis skills into play. Many self-assessment and peer comparison opportunities arise as students can see how their answer to a question compares with other students in the class, and can compare the quality of their questions and explanations with those of their peers. By the end of the semester, through their collective efforts, the class is able to build a large repository of multiple choice questions that can be used for exam revision.

As a student-driven resource, PeerWise requires very little moderation from staff. While I originally developed PeerWise for use in my own classes, it has proven transferable across both disciplinary and institutional boundaries. It is now regularly used across a range of departments at The University of Auckland, and at more than 10 institutions around the world.

Community-oriented learning

The “knowledge economy” demands that students develop skills to work independently, to filter and critically evaluate large amounts of information and to use online tools to communicate effectively. One activity that I use to build these skills has students develop exam revision resources collaboratively on the class wiki. Students must communicate effectively using the wiki to coordinate the efforts of their team. They develop skills in filtering and evaluating the quality of the wiki content, enabling the wiki to serve as a useful revision resource. The community focused aspect of the activity helps to develop a spirit of collaboration and is a central theme of my teaching philosophy.

A related activity, which leverages the experience and interests of my students, involves them publishing online a reflective report about a program they have written. They are free to choose the topic and the scope of their program, in line with their interests and capabilities. These reports are accessible via the class wiki, which exposes students to solutions to a diverse range of problems. The ability to read and comprehend code is an important learning outcome, and this is an engaging and social way of promoting that skill. The creativity and variety produced by students in this exercise is astounding – and each semester’s reports are archived and available to inspire students in future semesters.

When students submit solutions to their programming projects, I have them peer review one another’s work. Students review a selection of projects from their peers, giving them insight into the assessment process and allowing them to reflect on the way that their own work will be assessed. The peer review activity also means students receive very timely feedback – within a matter of hours they can read reviews on the project that they submitted – which would not otherwise be possible in a very large class.

In each of these community-oriented activities, students are encouraged to support one another’s learning, and this helps to build a sense of community in my classes.

Student diversity

One challenge that arises when teaching a large, diverse student population is catering appropriately for the range of abilities. Carefully designed open-ended assignments allow flexibility in the solutions, but also remain appealing so that students are interested in what they are doing and encouraged to engage in independent learning.

One example of such an assignment gives students the freedom to develop their own interactive games. My involvement in the assignment includes providing the software framework, and giving advice to students and helping them develop their ideas, including discussing many advanced topics which are well outside the curriculum. Students are very proud of the work they produce, and the showcase lecture in which I demonstrate the submissions to the class is always very well attended. The quality of the students’ work is often well above the standard expected from first-year students, and is strong evidence of the deep, independent learning which has taken place.

Future Directions

In the immediate future, I will continue to share my work on PeerWise with colleagues throughout the institution, New Zealand and further afield. I am committed to furthering the impact of this educative tool in diverse contexts. I am also currently in the early stages of designing a new tool which I hope will provide an engaging way for novice programmers to learn and think about programming.

Preparing my teaching portfolio highlighted for me that while not all ideas I explore have been or will be successful, investigating them and evaluating their effectiveness is important. It has reinforced for me the value of finding relevant contexts to ground course content and motivate students.

I feel a great deal of gratitude to the students I have been fortunate enough to teach over the years. Amongst them I have seen a capability and willingness to support the learning of their peers, and this community oriented approach to learning is now a central aspect of my personal teaching philosophy. It is my students who have had the greatest influence over this philosophy, and it is with them that the real rewards of my teaching are found.

Peer and Student Comments

“Wow, what can I say, PeerWise is one of the best learning tools I have used. The neat thing you have done is encouraged the PeerWise community, in a similar fashion to social networking sites, by allowing feedback to be provided; and utilising a leaderboard. It is the sort of thing that gets people addicted to PeerWise”
Anonymous feedback from PeerWise survey, ENGGEN 131 (2007)

“Having already sat through two degrees of lectures and a teaching diploma (BA, MA, DipTchg)... it is not given lightly when I say that Paul Denny is the best lecturer I have encountered. I'm sure that one day during a lecture we'll see a sequin-clad assistant and several white rabbits leap from his computer, such is his magic. He conveys an understanding that learning Java is difficult for beginners through his winning combination of humility and humour.”
Kim Maree, COMPSCI 101 (2004)

“He has the ability to continue with the flow of the lecture quickly after questions, interruptions, and the like. Throughout the lecture he requests feedback from the students on your understanding, and will revisit any topic should it be necessary... Paul has without a doubt the most dynamic and modern lecturing style I have attended here at university and other learning institutions.”
Andrew Johnson, COMPSCI 101 and COMPSCI 105 (2002)

“Paul’s attitude and enthusiasm were the best ever. I never understood so much simply because of somebody else's enthusiasm for the subject”
Anonymous student feedback, COMPSCI 105 (2000)

"I have worked in the same teaching team as Paul since I first started as a tutor in 2000. Paul is simply the best colleague and mentor that anyone could hope to have. He has provided constant support, encouragement and guidance to help me develop my teaching skills. Paul is a brilliant lecturer and a very kind, caring person. He is a superb role model for other tutors and lecturers, and gives his time generously to help colleagues to improve their teaching delivery and to develop more effective teaching materials. I feel very proud and honoured to be part of Paul’s teaching team as he is so highly regarded by both students and staff."
Ann Cameron, Senior Tutor, Department of Computer Science, The University of Auckland