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Scheduling and Student Performance

Scheduling and Student Performance. Clifford A. Shaffer and Stephen H. Edwards Department of Computer Science Virginia Tech. Student Project Scheduling. Managing large-scale projects involves significant efforts to plan and schedule activities

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Scheduling and Student Performance

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  1. Scheduling andStudent Performance Clifford A. Shafferand Stephen H. Edwards Department of Computer Science Virginia Tech

  2. Student Project Scheduling • Managing large-scale projects involves significant efforts to plan and schedule activities • It is human nature to work better toward intermediate milestones. • The same concepts can/should be applied to mid-sized projects encountered in class. • Students need training in this practice if we expect them to do it • For any project that needs more than a week of active work to complete, break into parts and design a schedule with milestones and deliverables

  3. Study • CS2606 Data Structures and Algorithms, Fall 2006 • 3-4 week projects (four during semester) • Kept schedule information: • Estimated time required • Milestones, estimated times for each • Weekly estimates of time spent.

  4. Results Amount Done 1 Week Prior to Due Date

  5. Interpretation • Results were significant: • 90% of scores below median involved students who did less than 50% of the project prior to the last week. • Few did poorly who put in > 50% time early • Some did well who didn’t put in >50% time early, but most who did well put in the early time • Correlations: • Strong correlation between early time and high score • No correlation between time spent and score • No correlation between % early and total time

  6. Correlation vs. Causation • Do successful students behave that way because they are “good students”, or does behaving that way make them good? • Test causation with Web-CAT data • Over 5 years, compare students who got A/B on one project, and C/D/F on another to see effect of early progress. • Again, we found a significant difference.

  7. What is the Mechanism? • Spreading projects over time allows the “sleep on it” heuristic to operate • Avoiding the “zombie debugger” effect makes people more productive (and cuts time spent)

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