Evaluating Face-to-Face vs.Virtual Pedagogical Coding Review Sessions in the CS classroom: An HBCU Case Study

Teaching incoming Computer Science (CS) majors how to program has been an important research topic for some time. Programming is an essential skill that CS majors are expected to develop. Literature show that there is a consistent percentage of CS majors who become stuck or discouraged while learning to program, which sometimes deter them from the major altogether. When it comes to underrepresented groups like Black/ African-Americans, the ability to retain such groups in CS is critical. Coding reviews are one potential practice that could assist students in their learning process with programming. This practice is common in industry settings and is used by professionals to solve major computational problems. Such practices could be transferred into the CS classroom to help students strengthen their skills for identifying both syntax and semantic flaws and related code defects of developed solutions. Literature also show that modest attention has been placed on the exploration of pedagogical coding reviews (PCRs) in HBCU settings of a CS course curriculum. A study was conducted to evaluate two distinct semesters of PCRs either face-to-face (Fall 2019) or virtual-based (Fall 2020) at a Mid-Atlantic HBCU in the United States. The students involved during these sessions were either enrolled in a CS2 or an Object Oriented Programming course. The results revealed that these students collectively showed a slight increase in their ability to complete a relatively similar PCR task more effectively after initial exposure. Furthermore, no factors were found to provide a sufficient advantage or disadvantage during either semester setting.