Work in Progress: Adapting the Treisman Model to Computer Science

We have implemented a workshop program adapted from Treisman´s work in first-year calculus. A work in collaborative techniques in computer science has focused on programming, but our work examines the effects of the workshops on the discrete mathematics, data structures, and algorithms courses. Most of our students transfer from community college and are commuter students, spending little time on campus and thus studying alone. An approach similar to Treisman´s could improve the performance of students with these characteristics. A preliminary analysis suggests that the workshops have an impact on student performance in the discrete mathematics and algorithms courses. Our work extends the previous work in calculus by adapting the workshops to computer science and applying similar analysis methods to determine efficacy. In addition, to provide insight for future workshop implementation, our work seeks to understand how students solve computer science problems. We do so by analyzing student responses in interviews involving a problem solving task