An intervention through teaching and learning practice for addressing stress and anxiety in students caused due to the challenge of studying a cross-disciplinary subject

As part of the Advance HE Small Development Projects 2019, Ulster University undertook a study to identify the extent to which teaching approaches contributed to improving the self-confidence and wellbeing of students. Dr Priyank Shukla, Principal Investigator of this study and Lecturer in Stratified Medicine (Bioinformatics) at Ulster University, Professor Stephen McClean, Professor of Biomedical Education at Ulster University, and Dr Elizabeth Hidson, Senior Lecturer in Education at the University of Sunderland, detail the project below.

In pictures above, from left-to-right: Dr Priyank Shukla (Principal Investigator), Professor Stephen McClean, Dr Elizabeth Hidson.

Findings

Results show that the number of students reporting that they found programming stressful reduced by 29% at the end of the module in comparison to the start of the module. Similarly, 22% of students reported a reduction in anxiety. In terms of confidence, each of the teaching, assessment and feedback approaches mentioned above showed an improvement in students’ confidence in their abilities to learn computer programming by 43%, 65% and 36%, respectively.

Results and feedback from this case study endorse that, for delivering a cross-disciplinary subject (in this case, Computer Programming) in a multi-disciplinary course (in this case, BSc Hons in Stratified aka Personalised Medicine), the approaches mentioned above are better for student wellbeing than the more traditional approaches of “lecture-followed-by-practical” for teaching, “closed-book” exams for assessment and “feed-back” model for feedback. They help in fostering a creative environment, encouraging independent thinking and team-work, as well as provide an enhanced learning experience to our students. This is important for developing economically important computing skills, which will prepare them for the Biomedical and/or Bio- Informatics job sectors.

Recommendations

We would recommend that these approaches be adopted more widely when teaching programming, with a view to improving the wellbeing of students learning programming.

Traditionally, the models for teaching programming came solely from higher education, as before the 2014 National Curriculum change in England (DfE, 2013), there was limited scope for teaching programming in schools. The students typically learning programming would be those keenest to do so as part of a Computer Science pathway. Our work on addressing the stress and anxiety that comes from learning an unfamiliar, cross-disciplinary subject (in this case Computer Programming) in a multi-disciplinary course (in this case, BSc Hons in Stratified aka Personalised Medicine), means that we will have a better understanding of how to teach programming. This positive pedagogy approach can transfer to Initial Teacher Education (ITE) for training Computer Science teachers, who will then in turn have to teach programming to school children from the ages of 11-18.

Given that the UK government is currently investing £84 million in training Computing teachers (DfE, 2018), many of whom lack sufficient programming skills, there is a real need for further research in this area.