In a field as interdisciplinary as Computer Science Education, navigating the landscape of research paradigms and methodologies can be both exciting and overwhelming. Research design decisions are often constrained by time, disciplinary familiarity, and uncertainty about the benefits of alternative approaches. In Computer Science Education Research—an inherently interdisciplinary field—these constraints can prevent researchers from exploring the full range of possibilities available to them. Cards for Alternative Research Design (CARD) is designed to expand researchers' awareness of different research approaches through a card-based research design activity. By engaging with paradigms, methodologies, and constraints in a playful format, participants can critically reflect on their current research without the formality or potential confrontation of direct critique. This exercise strengthens the reasoning behind chosen approaches, while also surfacing valid arguments for adopting alternatives, all with a relatively low time investment.

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Introductory programming courses present a unique challenge for many students as a novel discipline, requiring significant time investment and featuring a steep learning curve, resulting in students experiencing high levels of failure while learning. Students' perspectives on failure are crucial in determining how they confront these challenges and, consequently, their learning outcomes. This study investigates the relationship between undergraduate students' views on failure--measured by validated scales about growth mindset, fear of failure, self-efficacy, and academic resilience--with their performance in introductory programming courses. While self-efficacy and growth mindset are well-studied in computing education, fear of failure and academic resilience remain understudied despite their prominence in other disciplines. We collected data from three universities to conduct a repeated measures study of 58 students' attitudes toward failure at the beginning and the end of the semester. Our results indicated self-efficacy and fear of failure uniquely predicted performance, with lower self-efficacy and higher fear of failure related to poorer outcomes. Furthermore, students with lower self-efficacy and higher fear of failure were four times more likely to withdraw from or fail the course. Our findings suggest that measuring self-efficacy and fear of failure at the beginning of the semester can help identify at-risk students who need support. Research and interventions related to academic fear of failure from other STEM fields should be examined in the context of computing education to improve outcomes for our students.

Integrated computing uses computing tools and concepts to support learning in other disciplines while giving all students opportunities to experience computer science. Integrated computing is often motivated as a way to introduce computing to students in a low-stakes environment, reducing barriers to learning computer science, often especially for underrepresented groups. This study explored integrated computing activities implemented in US schools to examine which programming and CT concepts they teach and whether those concepts differed across contexts. We gathered data on 262 integrated computing activities from in-service K-12 teachers and 20 contextual factors related to the classroom, the teacher, and the school. Our analysis revealed that programming and CT concepts were inversely related to five contextual factors, such that factors predicting more CT concepts also predicted fewer programming concepts. These factors reflected school resources, such that wealthier schools used activities with more CT concepts and fewer programming concepts. In addition, factors related to underrepresented groups often related to fewer concepts being taught in activities. School racial composition was the only factor of the 20 that had a relationship with both types of concepts in the same direction-students from underrepresented groups used activities with fewer CT and programming concepts. Our findings suggest that, although integrated computing can potentially introduce computing to a broader audience, we must evaluate what these activities are teaching and to whom. Another primary contribution of this work is an open-access dataset about integrated computing activities, the concepts that they teach, and the contextual factors around their use.