Effectiveness of an Active vs. Traditional Methodology: A Case Study of a Lightweight Comparative Method in a Computer Networks Course

• Ricardo Couto Antunes da Rocha UFCAT

DOI: https://doi.org/10.5753/educomp.2025.4910

Abstract

Methodologies for comparing active learning techniques and traditional teaching are usually demanding regarding teaching staff and class availability. This paper presents a lightweight methodology for producing a relative evaluation between two teaching methodologies in terms of relative success rate of each student. We applied the method in a Computer Networks course class offered by a Computer Science department in Brazil. The results of this case study have shown that, on average, the effectiveness of peer instruction overlapped a traditional teaching method by 75%, for 80% of students. The paper also discusses the limitations of the proposed metric.

References

Akçayır, G. and Akçayır, M. (2018). The flipped classroom: A review of its advantages and challenges. Computers & Education, 126:334–345.

Bispo Jr., E. L., Lopes, R. P., and Santos, S. C. (2021). Peer instruction in computing higher education: A case study of a logic in computer science course in brazilian context. Revista Brasileira de Informática na Educação, 29:1403–1432.

Crouch, C. H. and Mazur, E. (2001). Peer instruction: Ten years of experience and results. American journal of physics, 69(9):970–977.

Deshpande, P., Lee, C. B., and Ahmed, I. (2019). Evaluation of peer instruction for cybersecurity education. In Proceedings of the 50th ACM Technical Symposium on Computer Science Education, SIGCSE ’19, page 720–725. ACM.

Deslauriers, L., McCarty, L. S., Miller, K., Callaghan, K., and Kestin, G. (2019). Measuring actual learning versus feeling of learning in response to being actively engaged in the classroom. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 116(39):19251–19257.

Hake, R. R. (1998). Interactive-engagement versus traditional methods: A six-thousand-student survey of mechanics test data for introductory physics courses. American Journal of Physics, 66(1):64–74.

Mazur, E. (1997). Peer Instruction: A User’s Manual. Series in Educational Innovation. Prentice Hall.

Salguero, A., McAuley, J., Simon, B., and Porter, L. (2020). A longitudinal evaluation of a best practices CS1. In Proceedings of the 2020 ACM Conference on International Computing Education Research, ICER ’20, page 182–193. ACM.

Simon, B., Parris, J., and Spacco, J. (2013). How we teach impacts student learning: peer instruction vs. lecture in CS0. In Proceeding of the 44th ACM Technical Symposium on Computer Science Education, SIGCSE ’13, page 41–46. ACM.

Zingaro, D. (2014). Peer instruction contributes to self-efficacy in CS1. In Proceedings of the 45th ACM Technical Symposium on Computer Science Education, SIGCSE ’14, page 373–378. ACM.