As universities transitioned in-person classrooms to virtual classrooms, instructors faced challenges and changes in how they conduct their classes and teaching style trying to keep virtual classrooms as similar to in-person as much as possible through the use of group work in breakout sessions. Within these breakout sessions, students are expected to work together to complete an assignment. Through 669 surveys and 19 interviews, our paper outlines the successes and challenges of breakout sessions and teamwork in virtual learning environments faced by professors, graduate teaching assistants, and students. Our findings show the importance of pedagogical research for online environments, the student need for persistent instructions and check-ins to facilitate teamwork in breakout sessions, and strong justification for the use of breakout sessions in online courses. Based on our findings, we propose design recommendations to address the challenges highlighted within the classroom and software used by instructors and students. Our work contributes and extends previous CSCW and HCI research in online distributed teamwork and education.

Background: Listening to music is a common practice among software developers. Music listening after work can help release work-related stress; while listening to music at work can improve work efficiency and make tedious work more enjoyable. The working environment of developers in the past few years has changed dramatically due to the vast adoption of remote and hybrid work policies. Aims: We aim to understand how listening to music at work affects remote developers’ perceived productivity and creativity. Method: We investigated 130 software developers and collected their music listening habits during remote work in a questionnaire. We studied the impact of listening to music on developers’ creativity and productivity while working remotely during the COVID-19 pandemic. Results: Our survey data suggests that developers generally feel more productive and creative when listening to music during remote working conditions. Conclusion: We found that developers who listen to music feel more productive and creative while working remotely due to reducing environment distractions.

Software engineering (SE) curriculum typically presents students with a final, team-based capstone project towards the end of their collegiate career. This capstone project provides students with a simulated real world development project, requiring students to learn skills such as communication and collaboration to complete the project. However, these capstone projects are prone to team dysfunction such as team miscommunication or an overall team communication breakdown. We propose to identify the challenges students and developers have communicating through online communication tools. Additionally, we aim to determine if we can maintain open lines of communication for each team member through bots in communication tools.

As the computing job market continues to expand, the demand for eligible professionals to fill open positions has increased. In response, diversity efforts seek to broaden the participation of underrepresented populations in computing. This movement towards broadening participation includes blind or visually impaired (BVI) people who, historically, have faced barriers in succeeding in a primarily visually-oriented field. The present literature has examined modifying current tools for greater accessibility for BVI people and developing new, more inclusive learning environments. We argue, however, for additional investigation into the accessibility of computing education from the lens of instructors who teach computing to BVI students. Our paper reports on findings from interviews investigating the learning experience of BVI students in computer science courses from the perspective of teachers of the visually impaired (TVI). We interviewed K12 TVIs regarding their experience teaching students how to code, preparing lectures to accommodate their students' needs, and the resources they believe are necessary to help teachers provide more accessible instruction to the students. Our findings revealed that despite the recent improvements to increase accessibility in K12 computer science curricula, challenges still exist regarding the technology used by BVI students and the lack of accessible learning materials available to teachers. Additionally, our participants offer suggestions of resources to help K12 teachers in providing more accessible instruction to their students. The findings may benefit those interested in improving accessibility in computing education for students with disabilities.

The rapid rise and ubiquity of computing has led to tremendous growth in the field of software development; growth that has outpaced society's ability to fill available positions. The gap between this large number of openings and the decidedly smaller pool of qualified candidates available to fill them has created opportunities for individuals from non-traditional backgrounds to pursue careers in software development. Due to the nature of their disability, blind and low vision persons have not to date been heavily pursued as candidates for software development positions given the arguably visually demanding nature of the practice. As such, we argue, there are significant knowledge gaps as it pertains to how visual impairment may impact a developer's contribution to a software development team. To explore this issue we interviewed 11 visually impaired software developers about their experiences. Our findings suggest that workplace dynamics, project management practices, and tool accessibility are among the most significant challenges for these developers. We argue that this work furthers the understanding of visually impaired software developers which contributes to the movement towards accessible workplace environments and employment equity in software development.