Improve Student Performance Using Moderated Two-Stage Projects

Parallel programming skills are becoming more popular due to the unprecedented boom in artificial intelligent and high-performance computing. Programming assignments are widely used in parallel programming courses to measure student performance and expose students to constraints in real projects. However, due to the difficulty level of these assignments, many students struggle to write fully functional and adequately documented programs. To improve student performance, we implemented a moderated two-stage format for five course projects in a graduate-level introductory parallel programming class. Each project is divided into two stages where students complete the assignment individually without any collaboration in the first stage. Then students work in pairs to work on the same project in the second stage so they can review each other's work from the first stage and improve their programs collaboratively. For two of the five projects, a moderated meeting is conducted in between the two stages where the instructor moderated a group discussion on general issues raised by students. We found that students' performance improved from stage one to stage two. In addition, the two projects with a moderated meeting show better performance gains. This paper also examines students' perceptions of and experiences with the moderated two-stage projects. Students favor working on two-stage projects because they had a chance to discuss challenging concepts and the moderated discussion session tend to guide them to the correct path should they make mistakes in stage one.