Pointer Error Logging &mdash
Towards an Improved Pedagogy for Teaching Pointers in C++


Meeting Minutes

Date Discussed Goals for Week
18 May We talked about the denman formun, how it went and our experience. We discussed the need to get thing to the point where we have only a little bit of work left to do after we get the secondquiz back. Start working on the results from the frst quiz and work on the final report.
11 May We settled on the final draft of our quiz. We discussed what needs to be on our poster Make the poster for the denman forum
4 May We worked on the quiz. trying to determine what the questions need to ask. Finalize the questionaire and workon a rough draft of our poster for the Denman forum.
27 April We discussed what we needed to do to be ready for the Denman Forum and for our final report. The summary needs to be more user friendly. The questions need to have accompanying explanations of what misconceptions we are testing for the instructors we are asking to review the quiz. We will need to ask for an extension on the CREU deadline as we are on a quarter system. We need to start working on our presentation for the denman. Add explanations to why we are asking specific questions. Remove thepointer math question. Work on making the error summary more user friendly.
25 April Linda and Elizabeth got together to create the final version/draft of the quiz. Email out the quiz so we all have a copy.
20 April We need to determine if we were able to garner enough information from the ERROR log. If not do we need it at all, or is there a better way to ask for it. Another question is what do we actually hope to achieve by giving this quiz. We continued to work on the creation of the questionaire, and how best to develop the questions. Develop a working questionaire as soon as possible. Determine if we really need to ask for an error log again, and if w do, is theer a better way to ask for it.
13 April In regards to the questions we are writing some thoughts are: how can we test if syntax is an issue, the questions shouldn't reference something too specific, should we use the same quiz both times. Specificaly in regards to "initializing" some pinters we think it might work better to base the questions off of a diagram. It also seems that the majority of the questions we are created relate to allocation and deallocation of memory. Refine the questions. Focus more on what is being asked than the actual question itself.
6 April We discussed the need for a more explanatory summary of what we learned from the students logs, as well as an explanation of the misconceptions behind the questions we write. Work on some questions and the rationale behind them. Type up more formalized summary from the tudents logs.
30 March Reviewed abstract we want to submit to be in the Denman Forum. Discussed were we want to be at different points in the quarter. Work on the abstract for the denman forum.
28 March Discussed the meeting time for this quarters meetings. Also discussed the denman forum and fine tuningthe abstract for it. Discussed the common misconceptions as we percieve them after reviewing the students answers: memory management, possibility of syntax as an issue, can we find a way to test for that. We discussed the format of the quiz and feel that it should be the same quiz both times. We also discussed the possibility of changing the way we ask for the help of the students, and wether or not offering "extra credit" would skew the results. Work on the abstract for the denman forum.
24 March We went through the responses from ERRORS.txt and generated a list of common misconceptions. Send out thank you emails to the students who provided a response.
7 March Our goals for next quarter will be creating the questionaire based on the data we collect form the error log and working the labs ourselves. Refining the error log. Reviewing the logged error data to see if there has been any change in performance. Work on the labs by ourselves and review the the data from the error log ourselves and write down our own ideas on what the misconceptions are, then we will work together to create the questionaire.
28 February We talked about where we needed to go next quarter. We decided that creating our questionaire should wait until we had seen the results from this quarters error log and from analyzing the actual collected data to see if there was any improvement and to see if we can tell where the misconceptions lie. We also discussed presenting at the Denman Research Forum at Ohio State. If time permits between now and next quarter we should look at the labs ourselves to see where we might have questions. Also over break it would be good if we could start the analyzing process.
21 February We decided to go with the idea of getting an error log, but not to use an extra credit incentive, because we were concerned it may skew the results. Make any changes to Error log request.
16-17 February We attended OCWIC 2007 and presented our poster. Our ideas seemed to be well received and many people were very interested in the idea of improving how students are taught pointers. Rest
15 February We Presented our poster to Europa to recieve input on how to improve our poster/presentation. Make suggested changes.
6 February We discussed what we will be doing at the conference and far along the poster has come. We agreed that a test presentation could be done at the Europa meeting the following week. We decided that rather than just comming up with questions we need to first decide what the target misconceptions are that we are trying to identify. Email rough draft of slides for poster out.
Email Professor Weide question asking students to log their errors
Come up with the basis for the questionaire we will create to gauge how well the students are learning pointers.
31 January We talked a little bit about our poster for OCWiC, we discussed some the the material on pointers we had read, and we agreed that someone more experience needed to review the question we are putting before the students to gain information about how they fix errors. Work on poster for OCWiC
24 January We reviewed a layout for our poster at OCWiC. Continue searching for reasearch on pointers. Work on ideas for poster.
17 January We discussed a rough draft of the layout of our poster. Work on our question for the students. Try to find other sources of information on teaching pointers.
10 January Talked about our goals for the quarter and the year. Finalize question to students. Do some research on teaching pointers.
5 December Discussed what needed to be done over the winter break so we could start working right away when we returned. Elizabeth volunteered to work on a proposal to the instructors and to send questions to all involved.
13 November Determined we are doing a poster at OCWIC 2007. Work on abstract and midterm report.
6 November Linda did math to calculate percentages by hand(Thank you) and entered it in Excel, for now okay but if making use of data more prevalent should just write functions to do so.
Stuff must be given to professors next week		 Get pdfs from Paolo.
Stuff must be given to professors next week
31 October We decided that we have made good headway in our goals for the first quarter, and that we need to have stuff to the professors by our second meeting in November. Update the website to include quarter decisions and links to pdfs of some of the references.
Come up with final graphs and proposed changes to lecture slides
24 October We reviewed what was discussed at the friday meeting. Set the goal of being ready to give the course instructor something within two weeks. We agreed to schedule next quarters meeting time within the week. Look at stack test and perhaps attempt the lab. Try to use the data collected to determine where in the program the errors actually occur. Find more information on how many students are responsible for half of the errors, and find a way to present it. Keep website updated. Think about how much "help we want to give the students.
20 October This was an additional meeting that was held with intructors of the course and other interested parties. Not Applicable
17 October Discussed possible ways to present the data. Come up with ideas/questions for the friday meeting.
10 October After reveiwing a summary of error data by lab, by quarter and overvall determined that a pie chart would beter than a bar graph. Also wish to list erors that did not occur in some fashion or another. Wish to meet with instructors in next 2 weeks to finalize what we will be doing. Linda is to explore better ways of presenting data. Elizabeth is to finish version 1 of website. Website will evolve as time permits.
3 October Decided that the best way to generate use ful information for students or instructors is some form of graphical presentation. Discussed which conferences we should try to present at in some form or another. Start further development of website. Explore queries on data.
26 September We discussed the general requirements or the website we will need to maintain. We discussed different ways of possibly filtering the data. We discussed when the pointer lab assignments are due in order to set deadlines for ourselves as far as generating a useful presentation is concerned. We learned that only the old data can be used for research purposes though any new data collected can be used for educational purposes. Generate Ideas for the types of filters and queries we should form. Look over data in database, and review labs to get a general sense of what is goin on.