Abstract
Conference Title: 2018 IEEE Frontiers in Education Conference (FIE) Conference Start Date: 2018, Oct. 3 Conference End Date: 2018, Oct. 6 Conference Location: San Jose, CA, USA This Innovative Practice paper presents a new approach to monitoring the performance of students working in web-based Problem Solving Learning Environments (PSLEs) which can be used to introduce active learning in large classes. This approach allows the instructor to pose a problem that all students will immediately attempt to solve. Classroom orchestration tools allow the instructor to monitor, in detail, the progress of the class on that problem. The Problem Solving Markov Model (PSMM) is one such orchestration tool. It provides a real-time graphical view of all equivalence classes of attempts that students have made on a particular problem and it shows the probabilities of going from one incorrect attempt to another. In this paper, we describe the PSMM for a particular PSLE for coding, called Spinoza, and we explore the connection between PSMM equivalence classes and student misconceptions. We also introduce an extension of the PSMM which allows the instructor to zoom in and out of the time dimension and we discuss the pedagogical applications of this extension for orchestration in large classes.