Peer Review in CS2: Conceptual Learning and High-Level Thinking

In computer science, students could benefit from exposure to critical programming concepts from multiple perspectives. Peer review is one method to allow students to experience authentic uses of the concepts in an activity that is not itself programming. In this work, we examine how to implement the peer review process in early, object-oriented computer science courses as a way to increase the students' knowledge of programming concepts, specifically Abstraction, Decomposition, and Encapsulation, and to develop their higher-level thinking skills. We are exploring the peer review process, the effects of the type of review "on the reviewers," and the results this has on the students' learning. To study these ideas, we used peer review activities in CS2 classes at two universities over the course of a semester. Using three groups (one reviewing their peers, one reviewing the instructor, and one completing small design or coding assignments), we measured the students' conceptual understanding throughout the semester with concept maps and the reviews they completed. We found that reviewing helped students learn Decomposition, especially those reviewing the instructor's programs, but we did not find that it improved the students' level of thinking. Overall, reviews (peer or otherwise) are beneficial for teaching Decomposition to CS2 students and can be used as an alternative method for teaching other object-oriented programming concepts.