This innovative practice work-in-progress paper describes using H5P-based activities to support student learning and engagement in face-to-face courses.

This innovative practice paper explores the varied perspectives of a computing faculty member and a group of instructional designers, who partnered to revise courses to increase active learning practices and integrate cross-disciplinary skills and dispositions into two face-to-face computing courses (CS 1 and CS 2), as part of a larger, grant-funded systemic change effort. The instructional design team members varied in terms of level of formal educational experience in engineering, computing, and instructional design

This work-in-progress research paper shares the findings of a survey of computing professionals regarding the importance of various dispositions on the job. Survey findings from recent graduates also include their perception of how well each disposition was covered in their undergraduate courses. Dispositions are beliefs, attitudes, or values, such as being ethical, being persistent, and valuing collaboration. Dispositions impact whether individuals will apply their knowledge and skills appropriately in any given situation. There is increasing recognition of the importance of dispositions in the realm of computing education, as evidenced by recent computing curricular guidelines (e.g., IT2017 and CC2020). However, few existing studies of professionals explicitly discriminate between dispositions and other types of competencies (e.g., cross-disciplinary or “soft” skills). Furthermore, little research has been focused on the degree to which professionals believe that dispositions have been adequately covered by computing education in the United States. This study will present the findings of a survey of computing professionals, utilizing items based on on a list of 30 dispositions derived from earlier studies. It will present practitioners' perceptions of the importance of each of the 30 dispositions and will also present the satisfaction recent graduates (who have graduated with an undergraduate degree within the last 5 years) have with the coverage of these dispositions during their undergraduate experience. Findings of this paper may reveal not only of the importance of dispositions in general, but which dispositions are most important, and which are most or least covered in current educational programs. The research team recommends that higher education administrators, curriculum designers and individual faculty members use the data-informed disposition list, in conjunction with college/university and departmental vision and values, to select a small number of dispositions to purposefully incorporate across their program. Findings may also be of interest to curricular guideline committees and scholars interested in dispositions, competency-based education, character education, or virtue ethics.

Competencies are knowledge, skills, and dispositions that enable professionals to successfully perform a goal-oriented task. A traditional education model focuses primarily on presenting and assessing knowledge, with student performance represented by grades. The Competency-Based Education (CBE) model focuses on each student developing and demonstrating knowledge, skills, and dispositions. This implies a difference in the approach towards curriculum (content), pedagogy (teaching methods), and assessment. This workshop will introduce basic concepts of competencies and CBE. We will present a competency list derived from research on computing professionals' experiences. Participants will develop a spiral curriculum and (re)design a course to purposefully integrate cross-disciplinary skills (e.g., communication) and dispositions (e.g., perseverance), along with computing skills. Takeaways will include: (1) an understanding of what competencies and CBE are, and what pedagogical and assessment approaches may align with CBE; (2) a document that integrates competencies across a spiral curriculum; and (3) a plan for (re)designing one of their courses. Collaborative ideation will be used to help generate ideas for each participant's unique context and goals. Higher education faculty/instructors and administrators who would like to learn more about competencies and apply CBE practices to their own program/course will find the most benefit from this workshop. Multiple people from the same program are encouraged to attend, allowing them to consider how they can plan for integrating competencies across their program-level curriculum. Please bring internet-enabled laptops/comparably sized devices, choose a course to (re)design, and have access to relevant course materials.

This special session proposal provides participants with hands-on experience in finding and making explicit the dispositional aspects of active learning. Many faculty develop interactive, active learning experiences to better support student learning; an oft-cited rational includes the notion that students will be ‘better prepared’ or more ready to go into industry. Course learning goals framed on the Revised Bloom's Taxonomy or other cognitive learning frameworks often fall short of capturing the breadth of learning and the full learning goals intended. This difference is an example of what is often termed a ‘hidden curriculum.’ Participants should bring to the session a syllabus for a course they teach which includes some aspect of competency development. We especially welcome participants who currently use project-based or other active-learning approaches in their courses.

This paper explores Computing and Engineering (C&E) educators' perceptions about dispositions and investigates their readiness to integrate dispositions into their teaching. Dispositions are the underlying beliefs, attitudes, and values that influence how individuals apply their knowledge and skills. Employers recognize the importance of dispositions in the workplace, yet in C&E education the cultivation and assessment of dispositions is not frequently emphasized. Recent guidelines and frameworks in C&E education require dispositional competencies. However, implementing these guidelines requires pedagogical and curricular transformations, including authentic teaching and learning experiences and innovative assessment techniques. This study aims to address an important gap in C&E education by investigating educators' perceptions and readiness for integrating dispositions into curricula, thereby contributing to the ongoing efforts to align educational programs' objectives with industry needs to foster graduates' success in their careers. This work is guided by the Agency Influence Framework, adapted to incorporate educators' worldview (epistemology) in addition to their beliefs, abilities, and motivations towards their readiness for change. The study provides preliminary insights and serves as a foundation for future research in educators' perception about dispositions.

Background and Context. Dispositions are personal qualities including values, beliefs, and attitudes that impact an individual's actions and behaviors. Dispositions help a person identify why and when things need to be done and motivate them to follow through in action using their knowledge and skills. A person may have the appropriate skills and knowledge to perform a task and yet may not be able to perform due to the lack of suitable disposition. Objective. As part of a larger multi-institutional project aimed at improving computing education through a competency-based approach, we plan to create a research-informed competency model that includes knowledge, skills, and dispositions valued by computing professionals in the field. The objective of this paper is to report our findings on dispositions based on the National Research Council (NRC) framework. Method. We collected data from conducting a systematic literature review (SLR) and interviewing computing professionals from the United States. For the SLR, we started with 4949 articles from prominent databases (ERIC, SCOPUS, ACM, IEEE) which were filtered down to 52 research papers using rigorous inclusion-exclusion criteria. For conducting the semi-structured interviews, we used criterion and chain-link sampling to recruit 31 computing professionals, including software developers, network administrators, systems analysts, web developers, engineering managers, and others. Findings. Based on the aggregate findings from the SLR and interviews, in this paper we present the dispositions that are deemed necessary by computing professionals or employers to any computing career. The dispositions were categorized into the themes of Collaborative Orientation, Conscientiousness, Intellectual Openness, Self-Regulation, and Lifelong Learning Orientation. Implications. We discuss the importance of incorporating dispositions in computing curricula, interrelationship between skills and dispositions, and possible pedagogical techniques that can be used to cultivate dispositions.

To deal with a shortage of computer scientists, industry is challenging the traditional view that students need a deep theoretical knowledge of computer systems. Some believe that time spent on assignments that do not reflect technical/development practices would be better used building practical skills. This is at odds with the pedagogical strategy of building mental models through students' implementation of tools and libraries that would otherwise be used as off-the-shelf components. Although project-based learning is a well-studied area, there is little to no literature that studies the link between these programming activities and the target cognitive processes. Researchers must understand the advantages and disadvantages of these types of projects in building the correct mental models and any transfer learning it enables. In this Birds of a Feather, we seek to create a working group of academics and professionals that are interested in an evidence-based understanding rather than reliance upon anecdotes. This group will look at the strategic implementation projects and how well they achieve their linked learning outcomes. This working group will discuss how to empirically define the value of these activities and gain a better understanding of how they affect a student's cognitive processes.

This article discusses the findings of a survey of nearly 300 computing professionals who are involved in the design and/or development of software across a variety of industries. We report on the surveyed professionals’ perceptions of the importance of a range of topics and skills, and the degree to which 55 recent graduates felt that each topic or skill was emphasized in their undergraduate experience. Our findings highlight the value of breadth and flexibility in technical skills, and the universal importance of critical thinking, problem solving, on-the-job learning, and the ability to work well in cross-disciplinary teams. These findings align roughly with recommendations by the ACM/IEEE task force on computing curricula. However, the recent graduates we surveyed report inconsistent coverage of these most important areas within their degree experiences. We discuss implications for education and for future research.

Significant efforts have been made to increase the number and diversity of students in pathways to engineering careers. This paper describes an effort to address these goals by adapting EPICS, a nationally recognized project-based, service-learning university program, to the high school and middle school environments. Preliminary data from 60 high schools in 11 states with over 2,200 students indicate that this program is having an impact on students' interest in and their views of engineering. However, students' academic and career choices are influenced by a number of factors. Building on previous research investigating pathways into and through engineering, we are beginning a study to explore pre-university students' experiences in our program and how they impact pathways into engineering using a mixed-methods approach grounded in Social Cognitive Career Theory. As an initial step, we have developed a survey, which can be given to students before and after they participate in the program, in order to determine changes in their self-efficacy, outcome expectations, and personal interest. In this work-in-progress paper, we describe the instrument development and data analysis processes. At the conference, we will present preliminary analyses of the pilot tests.

This paper reports on part of the findings of a mixed-methods study which explored the educational experiences of Computing Professionals who design and develop educational software. A particular focus is given on the gaps professionals perceive between what was covered in their formal (university) education and the skills and knowledge that have been most important to them in their professional roles. Discrepancies were found particularly in areas related to practical skills (such as testing, maintaining code over time, use of source code control and development tools), communication, critical thinking and problem solving, and strategies used to continue learning on-the-job. Participant suggestions for improving university programs focused largely on the use of large scale, complex, authentic projects of significant duration. The author recommends further consideration be given to explicitly teaching the type of self-learning skills and strategies used by experienced professionals.

This exploratory qualitative study examines computing professional’s memories of their own formal and non-formal educational experiences, their reflections on how these have prepared them for their professional roles, and their recommendations for an “ideal” undergraduate degree program. Data was collected through semi-structured interviews of experienced computing professionals. Ongoing on-the-job learning is a natural part of professionals’ work lives. Participants indicate that important elements in an undergraduate degree program include foundational computing topics, development of critical thinking and communications skills, and a strong emphasis on experiences similar to those encountered in a professional position, such as complex, realistic group projects. Specific programming languages and technologies should be used only as practice in solving problems and learning on one’s own.