Our work at SIGCSE 2019: Ebooks, jobs, privilege, what is research, and what is literacy

There was a time before each SIGCSE Symposium or ICER Conference that I would write a blog post about all the cool things being presented from Georgia Tech (see for example SIGCSE 2018 and SIGCSE 2017 posts).  But now, the list of things at SIGCSE 2019 from Georgia Tech and University of Michigan (my new home) is enormous.

I’m going to take a different strategy — the selfish and easier strategy.  Let me just tell you about the things that I know about because I work with the authors. All the proceedings are available here.

• Wednesday is the RESPECT conference (see program here). At the 9:30 session, Katie Cunningham will be one of the presenters of a paper “Job Placement Experience and Perceptions of Alumni from a Three-year Computer Science Program” with Miguel Lara and Bude Su about the job placement experience of students who graduate from the CSin3 program that won a best paper award at last year’s SIGCSE Symposium.
• On Thursday afternoon, I’m going to be on a panel with Lauren Margulieux, Leo Porter, Greg Nelson, and our organizer and moderator, Colleen Lewis.  The topic of the panel is “Negotiating Varied Research Goals in Computing Education Research.”  Greg and Amy Ko published a paper at this last year’s ICER, which won one of the best paper awards, that I and others strongly disagreed with.  Amy’s blog post captures the discussion and arguments well. This panel continues that discussion.
• Friday morning: I will be giving a keynote “Computing Education as a Foundation for 21st Century Literacy.”  I’ve practiced it every seminar and event I could find for the last couple months, so I’m ready.
• At Friday’s 10 am poster session, ECEP will be presenting a poster (Jeff Xavier as lead) on “Fostering State-level Change In CS Education: The Expanding Computing Education Pathways Alliance.”
• At a Friday morning 10:45 am special session, Miranda Parker will join Helen Hu, Jason Black, and Colleen Lewis to explore the role of privilege in CS education — an issue near and dear to Miranda’s heart (see, for example, this post).
• At Friday afternoon’s 3 pm poster session, Katie Cunningham will have a poster with Miguel Lara and Bude Su echoing their RESPECT paper.
• Friday afternoon at 3:45, Barb Ericson will be on a panel with Alison Derbenwick Miller, Lecia Barker, and Owen Astrachan on broadening participation in computing.  “You don’t have to be a white male that was learning how to program since he was five:” Computer Use and Interest From Childhood to a Computing Degree. I know that Barb is working hard on analyzing all the AP CS 2018 data, so this may be the unveiling of her annual analysis (see 2017 and 2016 posts here).
• Saturday afternoon, Barb Ericson (with Brad Miller and Jackie Cohen of U-M) will present a workshop on how to use the Runestone ebook platform that we use in our work (see, for example, this post).

I highly encourage everyone to check out the SIGCSE 2019 Best Paper award-winning presentations (see list here).  I’m particularly excited that Andreas Stefik’s (with Richard Ladner, William Allee, and Sean Mealin) project on developing CS Principles materials for blind and visually-impaired students is being recognized. We need to take more seriously making computing accessible to a broader range of students.