The field of Computer Science has always been one of rapid growth and change. We propose the investigation of Peter Naur's framework of Programming as Theory building as a means to make CS education more resilient to emerging technology and to improve student outcomes by encouraging a focus on internal understanding over the external artifacts of programming.

As professors, we want the students in our classes to succeed in mastering the material that we set out to teach them, but we must balance this desire with the knowledge that we have other responsibilities and a limited number of hours in the day. In this report, we document our implementation of a mastery learning inspired pedagogy using specifications grading in a software engineering course from the spring semester of 2022 in which 142 students were enrolled. Our two main goals with this approach were to reduce the administrative burden of the class with respect to grading and to promote mastery of course material while maintaining academic rigor. We provide evidence that both of these goals were at least partially achieved. In addition to outlining the structure of the course, we identify several areas where there is room for improvement with this approach and provide an overview of an online application we developed to facilitate the course.

This paper presents a case study detailing our experience applying a combination of Mastery Learning and Specs Grading to a section of a Discrete Mathematics course with 128 students. Our principle reason to use this pedagogy was to improve the learning outcomes of our students, so all students would have a good chance of succeeding, regardless of their previous experience. The course was focused on 10 main skill areas. Each week a new skill area was introduced and a quiz for that skill area was provided that week and each week thereafter. The quizzes were graded pass/fail, either they demonstrated complete mastery or they did not. Students who demonstrated mastery were no longer required to take the quizzes on that skill area in later weeks. The amount of extra work required for this approach with regards to grading was roughly twice as much as would have been required with a traditional midterm/final exam structure and three times as much for creating quiz questions. Despite this increase in the number of items that required grading, the overall time spent grading was greatly reduced due to the use of pass/fail grading. The Mastery Learning approach provided a strong incentive for students to attempt to master all of the core skill areas. By the end of the semester, 75% of the students had mastered at least nine of the ten skill areas. In this paper we discuss this approach and its implications for CS courses more generally.

After a long history of being viewed as a children's disorder, it is now recognized that Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) can affect adults as well. Individuals with ADHD often exhibit work habits significantly different from neurotypical individuals. This paper investigates the use of time management tools among adults with ADHD with the goal of determining where there may be room for improvement in current digital tools so that they may better assist our target demographic. We present findings from a survey of adults with and without ADHD. Our findings indicate dissatisfaction among ADHD adults with the tools currently available to them and highlight key areas for potential development.

Participants with motor impairments may not always be available for research or software development testing. To address this, we propose simulation of users with motor impairments interacting with a head-controlled mouse pointer system. Simulation can be used as a stand-in for research participants in preliminary experiments and can serve to raise awareness about ability-based interactions to a wider software development population. We evaluated our prototype system using a Fitts' Law experiment and report on the measured communication rate of our system compared to users without motor impairments and with a previously reported participant with motor impairments.

Blind or visually impaired persons may experience challenges forming a mental map of the world around them. Our goal, in this participatory study, was to bridge the gap found in current technologies for a blind woman by creating a model utilizing tactile feedback. To achieve this goal, we designed three prototype sensory substitution systems. These prototypes attempted to aid our participant in crafting a world around her by providing auditory or tactile feedback in accordance to her proximity to an object. Each used a different form of output for the user: audio, vibration, or pressure. All of the stimuli produced by the models was managed by a researcher in place of a computer-vision algorithm. From our participant's feedback, we hope to develop a device that will provide the user a physical sensory substitution experience of sight.