Updates: Dr. Barbara Ericson awarded ACM SIGCSE 2022 Outstanding Contributions to Education

March 2-5 is the ACM SIGCSE Technical Symposium for 2022 in Providence, RI. (Schedule is here.) I am absolutely thrilled that my collaborator, co-author, and wife is receiving the Outstanding Contributions to Education award! She is giving a keynote on Friday morning. Her abstract is below.

She’s got more papers there, on CS Awesome, on her ebooks, and on Sisters Rise Up. I’m not going to summarize them here. I’ll let you look them up in the schedule.

A couple of observations about the SIGCSE Awards this year that I love. Both Barb and the Lifetime Service to the Computer Science Education Community awardee, Simon, earned their PhD’s later in life, both within the last 10 years. Barb is the first Assistant Professor to win the Outstanding Contributions award in the 40 year history of the award.

I have one Lightning Talk. The work I’m doing these days is computing education, but it’s not in the mainstream of CS education — I focus on computing education for people who don’t want to study CS. So, I’m doing a five minute lightning talk on Teaspoon languages as provocation to come talk to me about this approach to integrating computing into non-CS subjects. You can see the YouTube version here. This is my attempt to show that each Teaspoon language can be learned in 10 minutes — I describe all of two of them in less than five minutes!

Outstanding Contribution Plenary

Friday, March 4 / 8:15 – 9:45

Ballroom A-E (RICC)

Barbara Ericson (University of Michigan)

Improving Diversity in Computing through Increased Access and Success

My goal is to increase diversity in computing. In this talk I explain why diversity is important to me. My strategy to improve diversity is to increase access and success. This work includes teacher professional development, summer camps, weekend workshops with youth serving organizations, curriculum development, helping states make systemic changes to computing education, publicizing gender and race issues in Advanced Placement Computer Science, creating free and interactive ebooks, testing new types of practice problems/tools, and offering near-peer mentoring programs.

Barbara Ericson is an Assistant Professor in the School of Information at the University of Michigan. She conducts research at the intersection of computing education, the learning sciences and HCI, to improve students’ access to and success in computing. With her husband and colleague, Dr. Mark Guzdial, she received the 2010 ACM Karl V. Karlstrom Outstanding Educator Award for their work on media computation. She was the 2012 winner of the A. Richard Newton Educator Award for her efforts to attract more females to computing. She is also an ACM Distinguished Member for Outstanding Educational Contributions to Computing.

SIGCSE 2020: Papers freely available, AP CSA over AP CSP for diversifying computing, and a tour of computing ed research in one hour

My Blog@CACM post for this month was about my first stop on my tour of SIGCSE 2020 papers (see link here). While the SIGCSE 2020 conference was cancelled, the papers are freely available now through the end of June — see all the proceedings here. I’ve started going through the proceedings myself. The obvious place to start such a tour is with the award-winning papers. My Blog@CACM post is on the paper from An Nguyen and Colleen M. Lewis of Harvey Mudd College on the negative impact of competitive enrollment policies (having students enroll to get into CS, or requiring a higher-than-just-passing GPA to get into the computing major) on students’ sense of belonging, self-efficacy, and perceptions of the department.

I said that this was the first stop on my tour, but that’s not really true. I’d already looked up the paper Does AP CS Principles Broaden Participation in Computing?: An Analysis of APCSA and APCSP Participants (see link here), because I’d heard about it from co-author Joanna Goode. I was eager to see the result. They show that AP CS Principles is effectively recruiting much more diverse students than the AP CS A course (which is mostly focused on Java programming). But, AP CS A students end up with more confidence in computing and much more interest in computing majors and tech careers. Maybe CSA students had more interest to begin with — there is likely some selection bias here. This result reminds me of the Weston et al result (see blog post here) showing that the female high school students they studied continued on to tech and computing majors and careers if they had programming classes.

I’ve been reading The Model of Domain Learning: Understanding the Development of Expertise (see Amazon link) which offers one explanation of what’s going on here. Pat Alexander’s Model of Domain Learning points out that domain knowledge is necessary to have sustained interest in a domain. You can draw students in with situational interest (having activities that are exciting and engage novices), but you only get sustained interest if they also learn enough about the domain. Maybe AP CSP has more situational interest, but doesn’t provide enough of the domain knowledge (like programming) that leads to continued success in computing.

In my SIGCSE 2020 Preview blog post (posted just two days before the conference was posted), I mentioned the cool session that Colleen Lewis was organizing where she was going to get 25 authors to present the entire 700+ page Cambridge Handbook of Computing Education Research in 75 minutes. Unfortunately, that display of organizational magic didn’t occur. However, in a demonstration of approximately the same level of organizational magic, Colleen got the authors to submit videos, and she compiled a 55 minute version (which is still shorter than reading the entire tome) — see it on YouTube here.

There are lots of other great papers in the proceedings that I’m eager to get into. A couple that are high on my list:

• Dual-Modality Instruction and Learning: A Case Study in CS1 from Jeremiah Blanchard, Christina Gardner-McCune, and Lisa Anthony from University of Florida, which provides evidence that a blocks-based version of Java leads to more and deeper version on the same assessments as students learning with textual Java (see link here).
• Design Principles behind Beauty and Joy of Computing by Paul Goldenberg and others. I love design principles papers, because they explain why the authors and developers were doing what they were doing. I have been reading Paul since back in the Logo days. I’m eager to read his treatment of how BJC works (see link here).

Please share in the comments your favorite papers with links to them.

Ebooks, Handbooks, Strong Themes, and Undergraduate Research: SIGCSE 2020 Preview

A few items on things that we’re doing at SIGCSE 2020. Yes, SIGCSE 2020 is still have a face-to-face meeting. Attendance looks to be down by at least 30% because of coronavirus fears.

Barbara Ericson (and Brad Miller, who won’t be there) are presenting a paper on their amazingly successful Runestone open-source platform for publishing ebooks: Runestone: A Platform for Free, On-line, and Interactive Ebooks on Sat Mar 14, 2020 11:10 AM – 11:35 AM in D135. They are also hosting a workshop to help others to develop with Runestone: Workshop #401: Using and Customizing Ebooks for Computing Courses with Runestone Interactive on Sat Mar 14, 2020 3:30 PM – 6:30 PM in C120.

I’m part of the massive special session on Thursday 1:45 PM – 3:00 PM in B113 that Colleen Lewis is organizing: Session 2H: The Cambridge Handbook of Computing Education Research Summarized in 75 minutes. Colleen, who must have done graduate work in organizational management (or perhaps cat herding), has organized 25 authors (!) to present the entire Handbook in a single session. Even if I wasn’t one of the presenters, I’d go just to see if we can all pull it off! It’s going to be kind of like watching NASCAR — you’re on the edge of your seat as everyone tries to avoid crashing into one another.

Bravo to Bob Sloan who got this panel accepted this year: Session 6K: CS + X Meets CS 1: Strongly Themed Intro Courses on Fri Mar 13, 2020 3:45 PM – 5:00 PM in Portland Ball Room 255. The panelists are teachers and developers who have put together contextualized introductions to computing, like Media Computation. The panelists have done interesting classes, and I’m eager to hear what they have to say about them.

I am collaborating with Sindhu Kutty on her interesting summer reading group to engage undergraduates in CS research. (Read as: we meet occasionally to work on assessment, but Sindhu is really doing all the work.) The evidence suggests that she’s able to give undergraduates a better understanding of CS graduate research, at a larger scale (e.g. a couple dozen students to one faculty member) than typical undergraduate research programs. It seems like it might feel a bit safer and easier to try for female students. She was going to present a poster at RESPECT on Wednesday Undergraduate Student Research With Low Faculty Cost, but it’s now going to be virtual. I’m not sure how it’s going to work right now.

SIGCSE 2019 Papers from the Blogosphere

I’m gathering blog posts from others about their SIGCSE 2019 papers. Here’s what I’ve got:

From Katie Rich:

https://katiethecurious.com/2019/02/24/new-paper-debugging-lt/

Rich, K. M., Strickland, C., Binkowski, T. A., & Franklin, D. (2019). A K – 8 debugging learning trajectory derived from research literature. In Proceedings of the 2019 ACM SIGCSE Technical Symposium on Computer Science Education (pp. 745–751). New York: ACM.

From Shuchi Grover:

http://www.shuchigrover.com/countdown-to-the-50th-sigcse-in-minneapolis/

(Paper) Non-Programming Activities for Engagement with Foundational Concepts in Introductory Programming (Shuchi Grover, Nicholas Jackiw, & Patrik Lundh) | Mar 2, 12 – 12:30pm, Hyatt: Greenway B/C (2nd floor)

(Poster) Integrating Computational Thinking in Informal and Formal Science and Math Activities for Preschool Learners (Shuchi Grover, Ximena Dominguez, Danae Kamdar, Phil Vahey, Savitha Moorthy, Sara Gracely & Ken Rafanan) | Mar 1, 10am-noon, Hyatt Exhibit Hall

(Demo) Integrating Computational Modeling in K-12 STEM Classrooms (Gautam Biswas, Nicole Hutchins, Akos Ledeczi, Shuchi Grover & Satabdi Basu) | Feb 28, 10-10:45am, Hyatt Exhibit Hall

(Lightning Talk): Thinking about Computational Thinking: Lessons from Education Research (Shuchi Grover) | Feb 28, 4pm, Hyatt Lake Bemidji (4th Floor)

From Brett Becker

First Things First: Providing Metacognitive Scaffolding for Interpreting Problem Prompts. 

https://cszero.wordpress.com/2019/02/27/sigcse-2019-best-computer-science-education-research-paper/

50 Years of CS1 at SIGCSE: A Review of the Evolution of Introductory Programming Education Research

https://cszero.wordpress.com/2019/02/27/50-years-of-cs1-at-sigcse-a-review-of-the-evolution-of-introductory-programming-education-research/

From Austin Cory Bart

https://acbart.github.io/python-sneks/interventions.html

PythonSneks: An Open-Source, Instructionally-Designed Introductory Curriculum with Action-Design Research

Austin Cory Bart, University of Delaware, Newark, DE, USA

Allie Sarver, Virginia Tech, Blacksburg, VA, USA

Michael Friend, Virginia Tech, Blacksburg, VA, USA

Larry Cox II, Virginia Tech, Blacksburg, VA, USA

From Lauren Margulieux

https://laurenmarg.com/2019/01/13/article-summary-margulieux-et-al-2019-review-of-measurements-in-computing-education-research/

Lauren Margulieux, Tuba Ketenci, and Adrienne Decker.

Review of Measurements Used in Computing Education Research and Suggestions for Increasing Standardization

From Felienne Hermans

http://perl.liacs.nl/2019/01/31/when-i-grow-up-i-want-to-become-a-programmer-elli-11-how/

Early Programming Education and Career Orientation: the Effects of Gender, Self-Efficacy, Motivation and Stereotypes

Efthimia Aivaloglou and Felienne Hermans

 

 

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.

 

Vote for SIGCSE’s Top 10 Papers of the first 50 years

The ACM Special Interest Group in CS Education (SIGCSE) has created a new “Test of Time” award.  They are trying to define the top 10 papers of SIGCSE’s first 50 years.  You can see the list and vote here.

Because SIGCSE is celebrating their 50th anniversary, ALL SIGCSE conference papers are freely available in the ACM Digital Library through the Symposium (Feb 27-March 2 in Minneapolis).

I don’t know all the papers on the list, but I’m happy that some of my favorites are there. Just mentioning a few:

• The paper introducing Scratch to the world.
• The Multi-Institutional, Multi-National (MIMN) study supporting the value of Peer Instruction in CS classes.
• The paper on CSin3, on which my student, Katie Cunningham, is one of the authors.
• The paper introducing Alice.
• The 2001 paper on factors leading to success and failure in CS1 (which I still cite pretty regularly).
• The Defensive Climate paper, which I cite even more regularly.

I do encourage you to check them all out, vote, and download as many papers as you can while they’re all free.

 

 

A little bit of computing goes a long way, and not everyone needs software engineering: The SIGCSE 50th Anniversary issue of ACM Inroads

This year is the 50th SIGCSE Technical Symposium, and Jane Prey was guest editor for a special issue of ACM Inroads on 50 years of ACM SIGCSE. You can see the current issue here, but yes, it’s behind a paywall — ACM Inroads is meant to be a membership benefit.

I’m really fascinated by this issue. Sally Fincher does a nice job telling the story of ICER. I enjoyed Susan Rodgers’ and Valerie Barr’s reflections. I’m still trying to understand all of Zach Dodds’ references in his SIGCSE 2065 future-retrospective. I found some of the articles frustrating and disagreed with some of the claims (e.g., I don’t think it’s true that AP CS enrollments plummeted after introducing Java), but discussion can be good for the community.

I was asked to write a piece about What we care about now, and what we’ll care about in the future. My bottom line is a claim that John Maloney (of Squeak, Scratch, and GP fame) reminded me is a favorite phrase of the great Logo (and many other things) designer, Brian Silverman: A little bit of computing goes a long way.

The important part of Scratch is that computationalists find value in it, i.e., that they can make something that they care about in Scratch. What we see in Scratch is the same process we see among the computationalists in computational photography, journalism, and science. They don’t need all of computer science. They can find value and make something useful with just some parts of computing. Scratch projects smell wonderful to Scratch computationalists.

There’s been a thread on Twitter recently about the use of software engineering principles to critique Scratch projects (see the thread starting here). Researchers in software engineering claim that Scratch code “smells,” e.g., has bad practices associated with it. There’s even a website that will analyze your Scratch project in terms of these software engineering practices, DrScratch.  The website claims that it is measuring computational thinking skills — I see no evidence of that at all.

These software engineering researchers are misunderstanding users and genres of programming. They ought to read Turkle and Papert’s Epistemological Pluralism and the Revaluation of the Concrete. People code for different purposes, with different ways of appropriating code. The standards of the software engineer are not appropriate to apply to children. Not everybody is going to be a professional software developer, and they don’t need to be.

Increasingly, people are only going to use parts of computer science, and they will achieve fluency in those. That’s a wonderful and powerful thing. A little bit of computing goes a long way.

Exploring the question of teaching recursion or iterative control structures first

Someone raised the question on the SIGCSE Members list: Which should we teach first, iteration or recursion?

I offered this response:

The research evidence suggests that one should teach iterative control structures before recursion, IF you’re going to teach both.  If you are only going to teach one, recursion is easier for students.  If you teach recursion first, the evidence (Kessler & Anderson, 1986; Wiedenbeck, 1989) suggests that it becomes harder to learn the iterative control structures.

The push back I got was, “Surely, we have better data than 30 year old studies?!?”  Here was my reply:

I agree that it would be great to do these studies again.  Given that we have an experiment and a successful replication, it could be an MS or advanced undergrad project to replicate one of those earlier experiments.

For myself, I don’t expect much difference.  As you say, student brains have stayed the same.  While the languages have changed, the basic iterative control structures (for, while, repeat) haven’t changed much in modern languages from what they were in C and even Pascal.  Curriculum may be a factor, and that would be interesting to explore.

Two directions that I think would be great to explore in this space:

(1) The Role of Block-Based Languages: As you say, the previous research found that iterative control structures are syntactically complicated for novices.  But multiple studies have found that block-based iterative structures are much easier for novices than text-based versions.  What if we went recursion->block iteration->text iteration?  Would that scaffold the transition to the more complicated text-based iterative control structures?

(2) The Role of High-Level Functions: I don’t know of any studies exploring high-level functions (like the ones that Kathi Fisler used to beat the Rainfall Problem, or even map/reduce/filter) in the development of understanding of recursion and iterative control structures.  High-level functions have a fixed form, like for/repeat/while, but it’s a simpler, functional form.  Could we teach high-level functions first, to lead into recursion or iterative control structures?  Or maybe even teach recursion or iterative control structures as two different ways of implementing the high-level functions?

In general, there are too many questions to explore and too few people asking these questions with empirical data. We might rely on our teaching experience to inform our answers to these questions, but as Neil Brown showed us (see CACM Blog post this month that talks about this result), higher-education CS teachers are actually way off when it comes to estimating what students find hard.

SIGCSE-Members, please consider asking some of these questions on your campus with your students. There are well-formed questions here that could be answered in a laboratory study that could be encapsulated in a single semester.  The students will get the opportunity to do empirical research with humans, which is a useful skill in many parts of computing.

SIGCSE 2018 Preview: Black Women in CS, Rise Up 4 CS, Community College to University CS, and Gestures for Learning CS

While I’m not going to be at this year’s SIGCSE, we’re going to have a bunch of us there presenting cool stuff.

On Wednesday, Barb Ericson is going to this exciting workshop, CS Education Infrastructure for All: Interoperability for Tools and Data Analytics, organized by Cliff Shaffer, Peter Brusilovsky, Ken Koedinger, and Stephen Edwards. Barb is eager to talk about her adaptive Parsons Problems and our ebook work.

My PhD student, Amber Solomon, is presenting at RESPECT 2018 (see program here) on a paper with Dekita Moon, Amisha Roberts, and Juan Gilbert, Not Just Black and Not Just a Woman: Black Women Belonging in Computing. They talk about how expectations of being Black in CS and expectations as a woman in CS come into conflict for the authors.

On Thursday, Barb is presenting her paper (with Tom McKlin) Helping Underrepresented Students Succeed in AP CSA and Beyond, which are the amazing results from the alumni study from her Project Rise Up effort to help underrepresented students succeed at Advanced Placement CS A. When Barb was deciding on her dissertation topic, she considered making Rise Up her dissertation topic, or adaptive Parsons problems. She decided on the latter, so you might think about this paper as the dissertation final chapter if she had made Rise Up her dissertation focus. Project Rise Up grew from Barb’s interest in AP CS A and her careful, annual analysis of success rates in AP CS A for various demographics (here is her analysis for 2017). It had a strong impact (and was surprisingly inexpensive), as seen in the follow-on statistics and the quotes from the students now years after Rise Up. I recommend going to the talk — she has more than could fit into the paper.

On Friday, my PhD student, Katie Cunningham, is presenting with her colleagues from California State University Monterey Bay and Hartnell College, Upward Mobility for Underrepresented Students: A Model for a Cohort-Based Bachelor’s Degree in Computer Science.  The full author list is Sathya Narayanan, Katie, Sonia Arteaga, William J. Welch, Leslie Maxwell, Zechariah Chawinga, and Bude Su. They’re presenting the “CSin3” program which drew in students from traditionally underrepresented groups and helped them earn CS degrees with remarkable success: A three year graduation rate of 71%, compared to a 22% four-year graduation rate, as well as job offers from selective tech companies. The paper describes the features of the program that made it so successful, like its multi-faceted support outside the classroom, the partnership between a community college and a university, and keeping a cohort model. The paper has been recognized with a SIGCSE 2018 Best Paper Award in the Curricula, Programs, Degrees, and Position Papers track.

On Friday, my colleague Betsy DiSalvo is going to present at the NSF Showcase some of the great work that she and her student, Kayla des Portes, have been doing with Maker Oriented Learning for Undergraduate CS.

On Saturday, my EarSketch colleagues are presenting their paper: Authenticity and Personal Creativity: How EarSketch Affects Student Persistence with Tom McKlin, Brian Magerko, Taneisha Lee, Dana Wanzer, Doug Edwards, and Jason Freeman.

Also on Saturday, Amber with her undergraduate researchers, Vedant Pradeep and Sara Li, are presenting a poster which is also a data collection activity, so I hope that many of you will stop by. Their poster is The Role of Gestures in Learning Computer Science. They are interested in how gesture can help with CS learning and might be an important evaluation tool — students who understand their code, tend to gesture differently when describing their code than students who have less understanding. They want to show attendees what they’ve seen, but more importantly, they want feedback on the gestures they’ve observed “in the wild.” Have you seen these? Have you seen other gestures that might be interesting and useful to Amber and her team? What other kinds of gestures do you use when explaining CS concepts? Please come by and help inform them about the gestures you see when teaching and learning CS.

Will be missing my friends at SIGCSE 2018 — Preparing for What’s Next

I am not going to SIGCSE 2018.  I haven’t missed SIGCSE in a lot of years, and I’m sorry to miss it this year.  SIGCSE is the biggest computing education conference in the world, and it’s the best place to hear what’s going on in CS classes and the United States — and to possibly influence what’s going on.  I’m particularly sorry because I owe Owen Astrachan a beer and dinner.  I lost our bet about Code.org and CSP Curricula.  I have to find another time to pay up.

I’m not going because it’s a time of change for me.  I don’t know for sure what I’m going to be doing next. This post is another in the (perhaps wearisome) series of posts where I explored what a post-full professor should do and my failure CV.

There are two forcing functions for the change:

• My wife and research partner, Barbara Ericson, is finishing her PhD on adaptive Parsons problems.  She is going to shift her emphasis from being Director of CS Outreach to more research.
• Our role in ECEP is ending in September.  From “Georgia Computes!” to ECEP, we have been doing work in Broadening Participation in Computing (BPC) for over a dozen years.  We want to move on. Others will carry ECEP further.  I started doing work in BPC as a natural next step from my research on making computing education for a broader audience (e.g., Media Computation).  Different kinds of research and leadership are important for the next steps of BPC Alliance work.

SIGCSE may not be as big a part of my academic life, depending on what comes next for me. I may do more Engineering Education Research in the future.  I may get more involved in preparing future CS teachers. My research directions are changing. I will continue to work towards Computing Education for All, and I’m interested in studying and developing different ways of getting there. The proposals I’m submitting these days are about doing work that looks like Bootstrap. I’d like to do more in applying computing (specifically, programming) as a notation and tool for learning in disciplines other than computer science. Venues other than SIGCSE may be the right places for this kind of work.

It’s going to be a great SIGCSE, and I’m thrilled that my student, Katie Cunningham, is co-author on a paper that will be receiving a Best Paper Award. Sorry I won’t be there to see all my SIGCSE friends this year.

 

SIGCSE 2017 Preview: Ebooks, GP, EarSketch, CS for All, and more from Georgia Tech

I have written individual blog posts for each paper or other contributions at conferences like ICER or SIGCSE. Then sometimes, like this year, that’s just overwhelming. So please excuse me for talking about a bunch (I may not even get all of it) of Georgia Tech related CS Education work at SIGCSE 2017 this year. (Conference website is here, and program is here. The on-line program is really nice, which is here.)

Workshop 101: GP: A General Purpose Blocks-Based Language

Wednesday 7-10 pm: Room 618-619

I’m helping to organize a workshop with John Maloney, Yoshiki Ohshima, and Jens Mönig on GP. I blogged about GP here, and about the use of GP for Media Computation in a minimal manuals structure here. The workshop will be the first SIGCSE activity with GP. The plan is to move it into a public form next summer, and the team is looking for people who want to start using it for their classes.

Panel: The Role of CS Departments in The US President’s “CS for All” Initiative

Thursday 10:45-12: Room 6E

I was part of an effort at last year’s CRA Conference at Snowbird to get CS departments to participate in President Obama’s “CS for All” initiative (see blog post here). This year, Barbara Ericson, Rick Adrion, and Megean Garvin will tell us about how their CS departments are working to promote CS for All. I’m the moderator.

EarSketch: A STEAM-based Approach for Underrepresented Populations in High School Computer Science Education

Thursday 1:45-3:00: Room 615

Brian Magerko and Jason Freeman will present on EarSketch, which I just blogged about here. They are also presenting on Creativity in Authentic STEAM Education with EarSketch on Friday 1:45-3 in Room 612. And then again Saturday 10-10:45 as a demo, EarSketch, a web-application to teach Computer Science through Music

CS Principle Ebooks for Teachers and Students building on Educational Psychology Principles

Thursday 3-4:30 pm: NSF Showcase in Exhibition Space

Barb, Miranda Parker, and I will present our ebooks. I blogged about our ICER 2016 paper on ebooks here and our WiPSCE 2015 paper here).

BOF: Researching the K–12 Computer Science Framework

Thursday 5:30-6:20 pm: Room 613-614

I’m part of a BOF led by Pat Yongpradit of Code.org with Leigh Ann DeLyser of CSNYC and Kathi Fisler at Brown. The BOF session will allow researchers to discuss opportunities in K-12 CS ed research within five areas related to the implementation and future of the framework:

• Equity and access
• Learning progressions
• Pedagogical content knowledge (Knowledge teachers need to teach CS)
• Facilitating learning in other disciplines
• Policy and implementation within K–12 education systems

Workshop 310: Using and Customizing Open-Source Runestone Ebooks for Computer Science Classes

Friday 7-10 pm: Room 612

Barb, Brad Miller, and Paul Resnick will present on the Runestone platform that we build our ebooks on. Brad built Runestone, and Paul uses and extends it frequently for his Informatics course at U. Michigan. This is the first time that they’re teaching others how to use the platform, which is a great sign of the maturation of Runestone — from researcher and early-adopters into something that all CS educators can use.

Designing and Studying of Maker Oriented Learning to Transform Advanced Computer Science
Saturday 10-11:30, NSF Showcase area in Exhibitions

Zane Cochran, a student of my colleague Betsy DiSalvo, will present some of his work on using maker spaces to improve CS education.

Concepts and Practices: Designing and Developing A Modern K12 CS Framework

Saturday 10:45-12: Room 611

My PhD student, Miranda Parker (who has been working on privilege issues and on the SCS1), and Leigh Ann Delyser (of CSNYC and CS for All fame) will present on the new K-12 CS Framework (see blog post here) and the research support for it.

Workshop 401: Evidence Based Teaching Practices in CS

Saturday 3-6 pm: Room 618-619

Briana Morrison is leading the effort with Cynthia Lee, Leo Porter, Beth Simon, and me to present CS teaching practices for which we have an evidence-base. We’re drawing a lot on our New Faculty Workshops material.

Workshop 404: How to Plan and Run Effective Teacher Professional Development

Saturday 3-6 pm: Room 612

(YES! Dueling workshops!)

Barb is working with Rebecca Dovi and Ria Galanos on how to teach CS teacher professional learning opportunities. Barb is using a lot of the material that she’s developed for “Train the Trainer” sessions as part of ECEP.

Where are the Python 3 Libraries for Media Computation

My Blog@CACM post for this month is on JES, the Jython Environment for Students, which at 14 years old and over 10,000 downloads, is probably one of the oldest, most used, and (by some definition) most successful pedagogical Python IDE’s.

The SIGCSE Members list recently had a discussion about moving from Python 2 to Python 3. Here’s a description of differences. Some writers asked about MediaComp. With respect to the Media Computation libraries, one wrote:

I’m sad about this one, because we use and like this textbook, but I think it’s time to move to Python 3.  Is there a compatible library providing the API used in the text?

Short answer: No. There are no compatible Media Computation libraries for CPython 2 or 3.

We keep trying. The latest attempt to build Media Computation libraries in CPython is here: https://github.com/sportsracer48/mediapy. It doesn’t work on all platforms yet, e.g., I can’t get it to load on MacOS.

We have yet to find a set of libraries in Python that work cross-platform identically for sample-level manipulations of sounds. For example, PyGame’s mixer object doesn’t work exactly the same on all platforms (e.g., sampling rates aren’t handled the same on all platforms, so the same code plays different speed output on different platforms). I can do pixel-level manipulations using PIL. We have not yet tried to find libraries from frame manipulations of video (as individual images). I have just downloaded the relevant libraries for Python 3 and plan to explore in the future, but since we can’t make it work yet in Python 2 (which has more mature libraries), I doubt it will work in Python 3.

I complained about this problem in my blog in 2011 (see post here). The situation is better in other languages, but not yet in Python.

• I have been building Media Computation examples in GP, a blocks-based language (see post here).
• Jeff Gray’s group at U. Alabama has built Blockly-like languages Pixly and Tunely for pixel and sample level manipulations.
• Cynthia Lee at Stanford has been doing Media Computation in her classes in MATLAB and in C++
• The Calico project supports Media Computation in IronPython (based on Python 3) and many other languages, because it builds on .NET/MONO which has good multimedia support.
• We’re able to more and more in JavaScript-based Python implementations (like Pythy and Runestone), because JavaScript has excellent cross-platform multimedia support.

When we did the 4th edition of our Python Media Computation textbook, I looked into what we’d have to change in the book to move to Python 3. There really wasn’t much. We would have to introduce print as a function. We do very little integer division, so we’d have to explain that. The focus in our course (non-technical majors, first course) is at a higher level than the differences between Python 2 and 3. I am confident that, at the end of our course, the majority of our students would understand the differences between Python 2 and 3. As we move more to browser-based IDE’s, I can support either Python 2 or 3 syntax and semantics. Preparing students for industry jobs using exactly CPython 3 is simply not a priority in our course.

CS Teaching Faculty are like Tenant Farmers

There are many, many teaching jobs available in computer science right now. Scarcely a day goes by that there isn’t another ad posted in the SIGCSE Members list — sometimes for many positions at the same department. A great many of these are at Universities, with a clear statement that this is a Teaching track position, not a Tenure track position.

Many of these ads, when posted to SIGCSE Members, contain a paragraph like this (edited and hopefully anonymized):

(Highly-ranked University)’s full-time (without tenure) teaching faculty positions are called (pick one of:) Lecturers with Security of Employment, Professors of the Practice, or Teaching Professors, or Lecturers, or Instructors. These positions typically involve a teaching load of two courses each semester, advising responsibilities, and service (committee work) as well. (Highly-ranked University)’s computer science teaching faculty are NOT treated as second class citizens. We vote at faculty meetings, represent the department on university committees, and are generally well respected inside and outside the department. We currently are seeking more (see ad below).

From time to time, I write the person (almost always a teaching track faculty member) who posted the ad, to follow-up on the “NOT second class citizens” part.

• Do teaching faculty get to serve on the hiring committee for teaching faculty? Usually yes.
• Do teaching faculty get to serve on the hiring committee for tenure-track faculty? Usually not.  This question often results in a snort of laughter.  Why should teaching professionals be involved in hiring tenure-track faculty? That seemed obvious to me — teaching faculty are hired to be experts in teaching, and tenure-track faculty do teach.
• Do teaching faculty serve on tenure-track promotion and tenure committees? Almost never, despite the fact that tenure track faculty are expected to teach and are supposed to be evaluated (at least in part) on that teaching. Shouldn’t professionals with expertise in teaching have a voice in evaluating teaching of tenure-track faculty?
• Do teaching faculty have a voice/position at the Dean/Chair’s Cabinet/Executive Committee? I know of only one in the US.

Maybe I have been watching too much “Downton Abbey.” The treatment of teaching track faculty by tenure track faculty sounds like the relationship between the landed gentry and the tenant farmers. The University teaches as one of its primary roles, just as the estate survived through farming (and the sales and rent that were generated). The tenure track faculty (landed gentry) leave most of that to the teaching track faculty (tenant farmers). It’s a delegated responsibility, like custodial and lawn management services.  The teaching track faculty don’t own the department or programs (land). The tenure track faculty make the decisions about hiring and promoting the teaching track faculty. The teaching track faculty don’t make any of the decisions about tenure track faculty.  Of course, the greatest match with the analogy is that tenured faculty can’t be fired — like the landed gentry, they own their positions.  Teaching track faculty are rarely tenured.  One of the teaching faculty with whom I work has only a six month contract and can be fired with a month’s notice.

It is in our best interests for teaching track to be a profession. Teaching track faculty should be experts in teaching. Members should be expected to join professional organizations like SIGCSE (see previous post about the lack of membership in SIGCSE), to attend and present at organizational meetings, and to improve their practice. They should have a promotion path and evaluation as rigorous as the tenure-track promotion and tenure process.  I’m pleased to see these ads, because they suggest national searches for good teaching track faculty — as opposed to hiring (for example) graduate students and post-docs who don’t want to leave their home institution.

A first step towards professionalization of teaching track faculty is to treat them with the same respect as tenure-track faculty. Tenure track faculty are treated as experts in research.  Teaching track faculty should be treated as experts in teaching. If both teaching and research are important, then treat the teaching track faculty like the research faculty. There should be a comparable sense of responsibility, power, and ownership.

 

The Inverse Lake Wobegon Effect in Learning Analytics and SIGCSE Polls

I wrote my Blog@CACM post this month about the Inverse Lake Wobegon effect (see the post here), a term that I coin in my new book (link to post about book).  The Inverse Lake Wobegon effect is where we observe a biased, privileged/elite/superior sample and act as if it is an unbiased, random sample from the overall population.  When we assume that undergraduates are like students in high school, we are falling prey to the Inverse Lake Wobegon effect.

Here’s an example from The Chronicle of Higher Education in the quote below. Looking at learning analytics from MOOCs can only tell us about student success and failure of those who sign up for the MOOC.  As we have already discussed in this blog (see post here), people who take MOOCs are a biased sample — well-educated and rich.  We can’t use MOOCs to learn about learning for those who aren’t there.

“It takes a lot of mystery out of why students succeed and why students fail,” said Robert W. Wagner, executive vice provost and dean at Utah State, and the fan of the spider graphic. “It gives you more information, and when you can put that information into the hands of faculty who are really concerned about students and completion rates and retention, the more you’re able to create better learning and teaching environments.”

Source: This Chart Shows the Promise and Limits of ‘Learning Analytics’ – The Chronicle of Higher Education

A second example: There’s a common thread of research in SIGCSE Symposium and ITICSE that uses survey data from the SIGCSE Members List as a source of information.  SIGCSE Members are elite undergraduate computer science teachers.  They are teachers who have the resources to participate in SIGCSE and the interest in doing so.  I know that at my own institution, only a small percentage (<10%) of our lecturers and instructors participate in SIGCSE.  I know that no one at the local community college’s CS department belongs to SIGCSE.  My guess is that SIGCSE Members represents less than 30% of undergraduate computer science teachers in the United States, and a much smaller percentage of computer science teachers worldwide. I don’t know if we can assume that SIGCSE Members are necessarily more expert or higher-quality.  We do know that they value being part of a professional organization for teaching, so we can assume that SIGCSE Members have an identity as a CS teacher — but that may mean that most CS teachers don’t have an identity as a CS teacher. A survey of SIGCSE Members tell us about an elite sample of undergraduate CS teachers, but not necessarily about CS teachers overall.

EarSketch Workshop at SIGCSE 2015

I’m an advisor on the EarSketch project, and it’s really cool. Recommended.

Next month, the EarSketch team will be offering a workshop at SIGCSE in Kansas City. This is a great opportunity to learn more about EarSketch, get hands on experience with the curriculum and environment, and learn how to use EarSketch in your classroom. This year’s workshop will also offer advice on integrating EarSketch into Computer Science Principles courses, though the workshop is of relevance to anyone teaching an introductory computing course.

For more information about SIGCSE, visit http://sigcse2015.sigcse.org/index.html
To register for the workshop, please visit https://www.regonline.com/register/login.aspx?eventID=1618015&MethodId=0&EventsessionId=
Please contact Jason Freeman (jason.freeman@gatech.edu) with any questions.

SIGCSE 2015
Workshop #20: Computer Science Principles with EarSketch
Saturday, March 7th, 2015
3 pm – 6 pm

Jason Freeman, Georgia Institute of Technology
Brian Magerko, Georgia Institute of Technology
Regis Verdin, Georgia Institute of Technology

EarSketch (http://earsketch.gatech.edu) is an integrated curriculum, software toolset, audio loop library, and social sharing site that teaches computing principles through digital music composition and remixing. Attendees will learn to code in Python and/or JavaScript to place audio clips, create rhythms, and add and control effects within a multi-track digital audio workstation (DAW) environment while learning computing concepts such as variables, iteration, conditionals, strings, lists, functions, and recursion. Participants write code to make music, with a focus on popular genres such as hip hop. The agenda outlines the pedagogy of connecting musical expression to computation to broaden participation and engagement in computing; the underlying concept of thickly authentic STEAM that drives this approach; the alignment of the curriculum and learning environment with CS Principles; and basic musical concepts underlying EarSketch. The intended audience for this workshop is secondary and early post secondary CS educators. The course is of particular relevance to CS Principles teachers but also applicable to any introductory programming or computing course. No prior musical knowledge or experience is expected and no prior programming experience with Python or JavaScript is required.