Teaching for understanding: redesigning introductory courses to focus on the learner

The authors describe a study-in-progress aimed at increasing student success in a freshman computer science course and ultimately in the curriculum which has shown promising initial outcomes. This study is being conducted by the department of Computer and Information Science at the New Jersey Institute of Technology (USA) and was initiated in the spring semester of 1993. The traditional teaching methods used in the past where the teacher presided over a lecture session supplying facts and figures, providing ideas, and presenting problems and solutions, has been altered. The learning environment of this new approach is reorganized to create an all-inclusive setting inviting the students to make the transformation from passive learners to active participants. Such teaching and learning methodology requires instructional redesign and role redefinition. The presentation of class material has been reordered, and the teacher and students cross each others confines and become a more cohesive entity.