Allocating students to projects is a commonplace task in computing education. These decisions underpin student-supervisor allocation, the formation of tutee and capstone groups, and pair programming. These allocations play a critical role for individual learner outcomes and the success of collaborative interventions. For example, imbalance in either gender, ethnicity, or nationality can negatively impact learner outcomes. Despite the critical importance of these allocation choices, we see little consensus on how these are implemented. The allocation task can be challenging and time-consuming for instructors of even moderately-sized classes, and the fairness implications can be difficult to assess. Inadvertently, an instructor may allocate in a way that amplifies existing biases or disproportionately harms those from disadvantaged or protected groups. From students' perspectives, a lack of transparency on the allocation process may also lead to issues of trust. The Working Group will undertake a study of allocation practices by bringing together educational and ML literature to develop and evaluate the fairness of allocation methods, and develop educator guidelines to promote pedagogically grounded allocation practices.

In this workshop, we invite researchers, practitioners and designers to reflect on ethical issues arising from Distributed Participatory Design (DPD) research with children. As participatory design research practices require rethinking and innovative adaptation in light of the COVID-19 pandemic, distributed, asynchronous and online (D)PD approaches may provide solutions to participation barriers. However, in light of this adaptation, additional ethical complexities may arise. Ongoing collaborative discussion is required to identify and address the different types of ethical issues which may arise when planning and conducting DPD projects with children. This workshop builds on previous workshops held at IDC 2021 and 2020, which provided insights into developing a protocol for a world-wide DPD project with children.

In this workshop, we invite researchers and practitioners as participants in co-designing the protocol for the world’s largest Distributed Participatory Design (DPD) project with children. Participatory Design – whose inclusive benefits are broadly recognised in design – can be very challenging, especially when involving children. The current COVID-19 pandemic has given rise to further barriers to PD with such groups. Recent key barriers include social distancing and government-imposed social restrictions due to the additional health risks to vulnerable children and their families. This disrupts traditional in-person PD (which involves close socio-emotional and often physical collaboration between participants and researchers). However, alongside such barriers, we have identified opportunities for new and augmented approaches to PD across distributed geographies, backgrounds, ages and abilities. We invite the CCI community to examine Distributed Participatory Design (DPD) as a solution for overcoming these new barriers, during and after COVID-19. Together, we offer new ways to think about DPD, and unpick some of its ambiguities. This workshop builds on work conducted in a similar workshop in IDC 2020, and this year will focus on the planning and design of the protocol for the world’s largest DPD project with children.

Despite its inherent challenges, participatory design (PD) has unique benefits when designing technology for children, especially children with special needs. Researchers have developed a multitude of PD approaches to accommodate specific populations. However, a lack of understanding of the appropriateness of existing approaches across contexts presents a challenge for PD researchers. This workshop will provide an opportunity for PD researchers to exchange and reflect on their experiences of designing with children with special needs. We aim to identify, synthesize and collate PD best practices across contexts and participant groups.