Professional dispositions are important in numerous fields, including computing. However, strategies to promote dispositions are not yet well understood. In this experience report, we share what students suggest to promote five dispositions: being collaborative, meticulous, persistent, responsive, and self-directed. To get a broad perspective of students' voices, we gathered feedback over two terms in four courses at three institutions.

Lifelong learning is essential in computing, given the dynamic nature of the field. Employers and curricular reviewers recognize the value of being self-directed in support of becoming a lifelong learner. The ACM/IEEE-CS Computing Curricula 2020 report identifies self-directed as having elements of self-motivation, determination, and independence. Little is known, however, about how to cultivate this disposition in computing courses. The motivation of this study is to better understand what behaviors computing students believe are self-directed. This study's research questions are: 1) What do students describe as their self-directed practices in computing? and 2) What do students report are factors that prevent them from being self-directed? Assignments in five undergraduate computing courses from four institutions included prompts to elicit student's reflections on how they were self-directed (or not). Thematic content analysis using the constant comparative method produced eight categories of self-directed behaviors (utilizing external resources, learning necessary material, working independently, assessing oneself, planning ahead, applying useful techniques, completing the assigned work, and reviewing against expectations). Thematic analysis also resulted in five categories of factors that impeded the self-directed behavior (assignment structure, unsuccessful effort, self-sufficiency, insufficient motivation, and insufficient time). Understanding how students describe self-directedness can help educators design pedagogical and assessment approaches that facilitate self-directed student behaviors in the classroom.

This experience report describes a book club model for an undergraduate-level Big Data Analytics course. Course learning outcomes included communicating ethical implications of data and models and working collaboratively with other students in crafting solutions by listening and demonstrating. Students read Weapons of Math Destruction by Cathy O'Neil, individually answered reading questions, and collaborated on activities in three class meetings. Students' participation and activity completion rates exceeded 90%, indicating engagement with the book club model. To understand students' experiences with the activities, students' work and survey responses were analyzed. The book club activities expanded students' understanding of bias in data and models, the potential misuse and harm when using and creating software, and how models can target users. In addition to providing activities for a specific book, this paper can serve as a template for using the book club model in any computing course.

As computer science education expands at the K-12, post-secondary, and graduate levels, more teachers are needed to staff courses. At the post-secondary level, permanent faculty lines may not match the computer science student enrollment, especially during growth periods. To meet demand, CS programs may teach larger class sizes, hire visiting or adjunct faculty, and request additional permanent positions. This experience report describes one solution to meet increasing CS course demands: hire alumni as part-time adjunct faculty members to teach introductory computer science labs. Alumni were familiar with the labs from the student perspective and some of the alumni even served as teaching assistants while undergraduates. Furthermore, the alumni served as role models for CS 1 students, preparing short professions talks to share about their software engineering career and life. CS 1 students completed surveys during the first week and last week of the semester to learn about their motivation for taking CS 1 (first week), their current major (first week and last week), their understanding of the computing profession (first week and last week), and the impact of the professions talks (last week). Students appreciated advice from alumni about practical job-seeking tips (advice for resumes, cover letters, and interviews), navigating college, and making the most of opportunities and resources.

The Covid-19 pandemic forced many institutions to offer online courses from March 2020 through June 2021. A challenge in the online setting is assessing student work while maintaining academic integrity. This paper reports on augmenting traditional written exam problems with short video explanations of student solutions. These exam videos share some of the learning goals of oral exams and technical interviews, getting a more complete understanding of students' thinking process on the way to a solution. While these exam videos were originally designed to combat non-authorized answer-seeking and answer-sharing practices (cheating), they were a positive learning tool for students. Over 85% of surveyed students want exam videos in future courses, even when returning to in-person instruction. The benefits expressed by students include getting a chance to reflect on the solution under less time pressure, correcting mistakes as they explain solutions, and demonstrating a more complete understanding. The main benefit for the instructor was to see and hear students' problem-solving processes. The time to record and watch videos was an additional task for both students and the instructor, so this solution may not scale to large classes.

Primarily undergraduate institutions (PUIs), including liberal arts colleges, provide a faculty career path distinct from that of faculty at research universities. Since PhD advisors often lack PUI experience, and PhD students may lack access to mentors at PUIs, this paper serves as a resource for those who want to pursue a tenure-track position at a primarily undergraduate institution. The paper includes information about the benefits and challenges of PUI careers, why departments hire, how to interpret the job advertisement, how applications are read by the search committee, the interview stages, offers, and negotiations. While this paper does not address computing education directly, it addresses the R1 to PUI pipeline which impacts undergraduate education in computer science. The advice presented in the paper is based on common attributes of the tenure-track search process at four PUIs.

A key element in many computing and engineering capstone courses is a team or individual project. The project is often open-ended, requiring students to embrace ambiguity, consider constraints such as time, tools, and finances, and create one or more prototypes. One may also apply design thinking and the design process to their career and lives. This paper presents a "design your life" assignment, adapted from the Stanford Life Design Lab, that could be incorporated into any capstone course. The assignment had five parts: 1) three 5-year prototypes including professional and personal goals, 2) one 10-year plan, 3) a thank you note, 4) a gallery walk to observe and comment on other student's 10-year plans, and 5) reflection from a prototype conversation or experience. The goal of the prototype conversation or experience is to give students a low-stakes method to gather information about themselves. For example, if a student thinks they want to coach a robotics team but has not worked extensively with children, volunteering at an afterschool program would be a great prototype experience. The goal of the 5-year and 10-year plans is to make students create a coherent plan, so they have a roadmap for the first part of their professional journeys. The intention of the gallery walk is to build community. This paper presents the course context, details about the assignment, examples of student work, and suggestions for adoption.

This paper describes the creation, use, and evaluation of POGIL (Process Oriented Guided Inquiry Learning) activities in a Data Structures course. POGIL draws upon constructivist and collaborative learning theories in which students work in teams through guided sets of questions. The purpose of this study was to see how students valued POGIL activities in terms of their learning. Survey responses were used to assess how students valued POGIL. Over 90% of students stated that POGIL helped them learn the material. Not only did it help them learn data structures, they reported value in working through problems with others, seeing how others think, being accountable for their own learning, and using the activities to review the material. Overall, POGIL was valued by students and this teaching method could be of value to other computing courses.

In this paper, we describe CS 1 programming assignments that encourage design creativity and that utilize user testing. All course assignments allowed for some student-defined specifications; some assignments required user tests to encourage interaction with other people. The open-ended nature of the assignments supported students' creativity and motivation to learn. The user tests provided a platform for students to share their creations and knowledge about computing with others. Both the creative aspect and sharing aspect of the assignments led to students taking ownership of their work. Overall, 41 of 44 (93.2%) students enjoyed the open-ended nature of the assignments and sharing programs with users also enhanced their understanding of their programs and computing concepts.

There has been an explosion of interest in bioinformatics, medical informatics, and healthcare informatics in the past decade. As a result, many computer science departments are developing courses or degree programs in bioinformatics and/or health informatics. This session is aimed at faculty who are teaching, or developing courses that tie together computer science and biology, medicine, or healthcare. The discussion leaders all have experience teaching courses in healthcare informatics and/or bioinformatics within computer science departments. We will share our expertise and experience on such issues as effectively team teaching interdisciplinary courses, developing case studies and projects, and developing links with biologists and clinicians. Some of the questions we might tackle: What types of courses should be included in degree programs? What role do curricular standards, especially in healthcare, play? What topics belong in interdisciplinary bioinformatics courses? How do we cope with students who may have differing backgrounds and prerequisites? The hope is that we can create an informal network for sharing ideas which will persist after the session. To this end, we will also discuss ways for maintaining a community, perhaps as a mailing list, blog, or website.

This study examines the extent to which novice computing students with minimal computer science coursework and no training in user interface (UI) evaluation consider UI concepts such as usability, user experience, and the context in which software will be used when evaluating an interface. In analyzing the responses of 149 novice computer science students who were asked to evaluate two interfaces for converting temperatures between Fahrenheit and Celsius, we observed that students generally considered usability and user experience factors, but were less likely to consider context. For educators, this exact task could be given to a class in order to initiate discussion of user-centered design; the study also provides a framework for structuring the discussion. More generally, the results of this study provide insight into some opportunities and challenges in teaching good interface design and evaluation skills.

Expertise is developed through both a) self-reflection and b) making useful plans for improvement [3, 10]. Traditional novice-level programming assignments require neither of these skills to be used. Could we get students to think about improving their software development processes? What areas would they identify as needing improvement? Could they write effective plans for themselves? In this experience report, we analyze the results of an intervention with 236 CS1.5 students asking them to do these activities. We find that they most commonly make improvements in planning, compared to coding and testing. Additionally, over half of the plans they make are so vague as to be of little use in helping students identify if they have, in fact, improved. Finally, we asked students at the end of the term to reflect on how their experiences with programming assignments changed over the term. We discuss our results in light of how instructors can focus instruction to help students become more meta-cognitive about their own software development processes.

This special issue includes the first set of articles addressing broadening participation in computing education. The articles span the stages of the pipeline, from introducing middle school children to computer science to retaining underrepresented groups at the university level. The preface presented here outlines the need for increasing the participation of underrepresented minorities, women, and people with disabilities in the development of technology. In addition, the preface summarizes the six articles included in this first (of two) issues on broadening participation.

This special issue includes the second set of articles addressing broadening participation in computing education. The articles span the stages of the pipeline, from introducing middle school children to computer science to retaining under-represented groups at the university level. The preface presented here outlines the need for increasing the participation of under-represented minorities, women, and people with disabilities in the development of technology. In addition, the preface summarizes the seven articles included in this second issue (of two) on broadening participation.

This paper investigates what students understand about algorithm efficiency before receiving any formal instruction on the topic. We gave students a challenging search problem and two solutions, then asked them to identify the more efficient solution and to justify their choice. Many students did not use the standard worst-case analysis of algorithms; rather they chose other metrics, including average-case, better for more cases, better in all cases, one algorithm being more correct, and better for real-world scenarios. Students were much more likely to choose the correct algorithm when they were asked to trace the algorithms on specific examples; this was true even if they traced the algorithms incorrectly.

This paper provides an analysis of students' choices and rationale with respect to gender and diversity in hiring software professionals. The study population included students at two universities who were asked to hire a software developer and a program manager from a pool of four candidates for a fictitious software company. As part of a written assignment, students provided reasons for choosing and not choosing candidates. To understand the role gender played in selecting candidates, the study included two candidate pools. The first candidate pool included four candidates. The second candidate pool differed from the first in that the descriptions of two of the candidates, represented by opposite genders, were switched. This paper reports on the following questions: 1) Does gender matter in the rate of selection among candidates?, 2) Does gender matter in how the candidates are perceived?, and 3) What statements about gender and diversity did students make? Through analyzing students' work, our study shows that gender plays a role in the rate of selection: the female candidate is more popular. Assumptions about candidates vary with gender. Finally, some students use diversity as a hiring criterion while others openly reject using gender and diversity as criteria in hiring.

We asked students to make hiring decisions for a program manager and a software engineer for a fictitious software company. In one population of students, a pool of four candidates was provided. In another population of students, the candidates differed from the first in that the descriptions of two of the candidates were represented by the opposite gender. This poster provides evidence to help answer the following research questions: 1) Does gender matter in the rate of selection among candidates? and 2) Does gender matter in how candidates are perceived? Through analyzing students' work, we show that gender plays a role: the female candidate is more popular and assumptions and perceptions about candidates vary with gender.

In this hands-on special session, attendees will learn about and use a Game of Life cellular automata framework (Java) to assist with outreach activities. Using the framework, students with no prior programming experience can create interesting behaviors within thirty minutes. The special session leaders have successfully used this approach for thirteen years in a one-week summer workshop for disabled high school students. The SIGCSE special session will include an introduction to the framework and keys to its success as an outreach activity, followed by participants solving, programming, and proposing specific problems. Attendees will be equipped to guide Game of Life outreach activities at their own outreach events.

This article provides an analysis of student responses to an exercise used in a computer ethics and a software engineering course to raise awareness of issues related to hiring, including issues of professional responsibility and diversity. Students from two different universities were asked to evaluate four candidates for two positions in a fictitious software company. They then developed a set of criteria for evaluation and constructed an argument to support their choices. After discussing their choice with others in the class, students could change their hiring decisions. Students' hiring criteria were coded using emergent categories, inferences in the arguments were coded according to the criteria, and reasons for changing hiring decisions were coded. Students considered criteria that fell into five areas: technical skills, soft skills, personal traits, previous employment, and career/job considerations. Reasons for changing hiring choices included previous experience, diversity considerations, people skills, leadership skills, and reaching consensus. The article also reports inferences students made about the job candidates.

This paper provides an analysis of student responses to an exercise used in a computer ethics and a software engineering course to raise awareness of issues related to hiring, including issues of professional responsibility and diversity. Students from two different universities were asked to evaluate four candidates for two positions in a fictitious software company. They then developed a set of criteria for evaluation and constructed an argument to support their choices. After discussing their choice with others in the class, students could change their hiring decisions. Students' hiring criteria were coded using emergent categories, inferences in the arguments were coded according to the criteria, and reasons for changing hiring decisions were coded. Students considered criteria that fell into five areas: technical skills, soft skills, personal traits, previous employment, and career/job considerations. Reasons for changing hiring choices included previous experience, diversity considerations, people skills, leadership skills, and reaching consensus. The paper also reports inferences students made about the job candidates.

We consider live continuous broadcast (such as radio or TV) to which users can join with time-shifting. They can join the broadcast at time t and receive the broadcast of time t - w for some offset parameter w ges 0. The simplest implementation that supports such a feature allocates a dedicated channel for each arrival time t and offset value w. Using such a technique, the server bandwidth quickly becomes a bottleneck. We adapt the stream merging technique to the time-shifting model, which allows us to greatly reduce the required server bandwidth. In addition to the application of distributing popular media, there are many other applications such as distance learning and large Internet events that could benefit from the use of time-shifting

Successful software engineering requires experience and acknowledgment of complexity, including that which leads designers to recognize ambiguity within the software design description itself. We report on a study of 21 post-secondary institutions from the USA, UK, Sweden, and New Zealand. First competency and graduating students as well as educators were asked to perform a software design task. We found that as students go from first competency to graduating seniors they tend to recognize ambiguities in under-specified problems. Additionally, participants who recognized ambiguity addressed more requirements of the design.

The generalized windows scheduling problem for n jobs on multiple machines is defined as follows: Given is a sequence, I =\ang(w1, l1),(w2, l 2),...,(wn, ln) of n pairs of positive integers that are associated with the jobs 1,2,...,n, respectively. The processing length of job i is li slots (a slot is the processing time of one length unit). The goal is to repeatedly and non-preemptively schedule all the jobs on the fewest possible parallel machines such that the gap (window) between two consecutive executions of the first slot of job i is at most wi slots. This problem arises in push broadcast systems in which data is transmitted on parallel channels.

Computer science instructors frequently teach using slides displayed with a computer and a data projector. This has many advantages, e.g., ability to present prepared materials and ease of switching the display to a development environment during mid-presentation. However, existing computer-based presentation systems severely limit flexibility in delivery, hindering instructors' extemporaneous adaptation of their presentations to match their audiences. One major limitation of computer-based systems is lack of support for high-quality handwriting over slides, as with overhead projectors and other manual presentation systems. We developed and deployed Classroom Presenter, a Tablet PC-based presentation system that (1) combines the advantages of existing computer-based and manual presentation systems and (2) builds on these systems, introducing novel affordances. Classroom Presenter has been used in 25 Computer Science courses at three universities. In this paper we describe the system, summarize results from its deployment, and detail several novel uses of the system by instructors in computer science courses.

Pair Programming has been successful in many introductory computer science courses. Its success has manifested in increased retention rates, better performance on programming tasks, increased confidence, and decreased frustration. This paper highlights experiences using pair programming coupled with individual written reports in a large, introductory computer science course. Through analysis of survey data and written reports, our study shows that students perceive benefits in pair programming, such as those documented earlier (social structure, peer help, less frustration, reduced workload). Regarding the written reports, students cited benefits such as a chance to summarize their project, to reflect on the code, and to use new vocabulary. We discuss what we learn about students' processes, their challenges, and the resources they use for supporting their learning.

We have developed and deployed a lecture presentation system in which the instructor uses a Tablet PC as a presentation device. The system was deployed in six university courses in Autumn 2002 and has been favorably received by students and instructors. In our system, the instructor holds a pen-based computer that is wirelessly networked with another computer driving the classroom projector. The instructor displays slides from the tablet and can write on top of them. Various navigation and control facilities are available.

Students bring prior knowledge and experiences to the classroom. According to the constructivist learning theory, students incorporate new knowledge into their existing knowledge frameworks. We used Classroom Assessment Techniques in an information technology course to elicit the construction of knowledge process. We found that CATs and instructor feedback can help shape and reveal this construction process. For example, responses to CATs revealed students' understandings of variables, digital representation, and iteration in the information technology domain. Some students claimed that the CATs helped put new ideas into their own words and helped them simplify the concepts.

In this paper we describe and evaluate Classroom Assessment Tools (CATs) designed to encourage interaction and student ownership in an introductory programming course (CS 1). Traditionally, Classroom Assessment Techniques allow instructors to collect feedback from students regarding their understanding of course material \citeangelo93. We developed and categorized over 60 specific CATs to facilitate discussion and learning in a CS 1 course.The Classroom Assessment Tools described in this paper highlight concepts from recorded lectures that are used in CS 1 distance courses employing the Tutored Video Instruction (TVI) model. We present a qualitative evaluation of Classroom Assessment Tools as discussion frameworks in a TVI course offering. Evidence from site observations, interviews with the instructor and students, and survey responses from the instructor and students indicate that the CATs created classroom interaction, improved students' attitudes in the course, and provided assessment opportunities for the instructor.