Explaining Concepts through Labs that Present Real-World Scenarios in an Introductory Computer Science MOOC

Massive Online Open Courses (MOOCs) such as those hosted on edX have the ability to reach thousands of students all over the world. Typically, they consist of a combination of lectures, graded assignments, and tests and are generally less interactive than the typical in person course. We believe that the interactive aspect of in person courses add a lot of value to the class and can and therefore should be added to MOOCs. Adding additional ungraded exercises that are fun, interactive, engaging, and present real-world scenarios can allow students to further explore concepts otherwise only taught through lectures. Additionally, by connecting these concepts to real-world scenarios they are already familiar with, students may be better able to think intuitively about the concepts and the related code. In this thesis we present a set of labs that will hopefully provide these benefits in the edX course 6.00.1x (Introduction to Computer Science and Programming Using Python).

Name thesis:degree_name

Master

Department dc:contributor.department

Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science

Grantor dc:publisher

Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Year dc:date.issued

2023

Author dc:creator

• Yang, Yilinn

Advisor dc:contributor.advisor

• Bell, Ana

Statement dc:rights

• In Copyright - Educational Use Permitted
• Copyright retained by author(s)

Licence dc:rights.uri

• https://rightsstatements.org/page/InC-EDU/1.0/

Handle dc:identifier.uri

https://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/151415

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:dspace.mit.edu:1721.1/151415