T24S Vs TPS

Think-Pair-Share(TPS) is a well known active learning strategy in which students work on the problem posed by the instructor, first individually, then in pair and finally together with the class. TPS develops technical and soft skill and promotes confidence, self learning & critical thinking ability. TPS consist of three phases: Think, Pair and Share phase, so this activity is not suitable for complex problem requiring more than two students to work in group to complete the task. Hence in this current study, TPS activity is modified and I renamed the activity as T24S (Think-Pair-Four in Group-Share) activity. T24S consists of four phases: Think, Pair, Four in Group and Share. In phase “Four in group”, each pre-assigned pair team up with another pair creating a team of four students, they share their answer and work together to complete the task. In this paper, how T24S method can be used for the Theory of Computation of Second Year, System Programming and Compiler Construction of Third Year Computer Science and Engineering course is explained. To test the effectiveness of this T24S over TPS activity, two group post-test only method for the course Compiler Construction of Third Year Computer Science and Engineering is considered. The Learning Objectives (LOs) are – 1) Compute the FIRST set for the given context free grammar (CFG). (LO1), 2) Compute the FIRST set for the given context free grammar (CFG). (LO2) and 3) Construct the parsing table for LL(1) grammar (LO3). For control group TPS activity was considered after blackboard teaching while for experimental group, T24S activity was considered after blackboard teaching. Statistical analysis using t-Test and Mann Whitney test shows that statistically significant performance on a post-test is observed for the experimental group as compared to the control group. Also the feedback about the T24S activity was also conducted to check the students’ perception about this activity.