Communications of the ACM
A goal-oriented approach to laboratory development and implementation
SIGCSE '95 Proceedings of the twenty-sixth SIGCSE technical symposium on Computer science education
Designing closed laboratories for a computer science course
SIGCSE '96 Proceedings of the twenty-seventh SIGCSE technical symposium on Computer science education
Proceedings of the third international workshop on Computing education research
Circuits and logic in the lab: toward a coherent picture of computation
Proceedings of the 15th Western Canadian Conference on Computing Education
A case study of environmental factors influencing teaching assistant job satisfaction
Proceedings of the ninth annual international conference on International computing education research
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We report on best practices we have established to teach first-year computer science students in closed laboratories, founded on over three years of action research in a large introductory discrete mathematics and digital logic course. Our practices have resulted in statistically significant improvements in student and teaching assistant perception of the labs. Specifically, we discuss our practices of streamlining labs to reduce load on students that is extraneous to the lab's learning goals; establishing a positive first impression for students and TAs in the early weeks of the term; and effectively managing the teaching staff, including weekly preparation meetings for TAs using and a gradual, iterative curriculum development cycle that engages all stakeholders in the course.