Mini-Lectures Interleaved with Exercises Found Beneficial in Online Learning

Face-to-face classes had been replaced by online classes from primary schools to universities around the world due to COVID-19. In a 4th year computer science course, we forwent conventionally separated lectures and programming laboratories lasting 2 hours each and switched to alternating mini-lectures and student exercises several times in a 2-hour timeslot. Students reported that they learned better with improved motivation in this new class format. Students also indicated that they were mostly neutral about whether the face of professor was shown in online lecture.