There are a number of different approaches to the investigation of teaching and learning within the subject of Computing Education. Many of the advances in pedagogy that have taken place over the past thirty years have been due to careful statistical analysis of empirical data, enhancing the reputation of the subject within the broader Computing discipline. Empirical, qualitative methodologies, of the kinds used extensively in the Social Sciences, have also appeared in the Computing Education literature, often investigating the socio-cultural aspects of the subject. More recently, there has been a proposal to develop a role for philosophical inquiry in Computing Education, which mirrors similar historical developments in Engineering Education. Rather than focus on the quantitative or qualitative analysis of the student experience, philosophical investigation instead relies on the use of conceptual analysis to investigate the detailed semantic content of ideas raised in the practice of computing education, careful analysis of the methodologies used to do such work, and a critique of the assumptions that underlie the subject.

This research-to-practice full paper discusses students' views on the role of generative artificial intelligence (GenAI) in their learning. The rapid integration of GenAI in educational settings has prompted significant interest in its implications for learning and academic integrity. This study investigates the adoption and impact of GenAI tools among computing students at a university, focusing on how they are utilized for educational purposes and their ethical implications. Semi-structured interviews with nine computing students were used to examine GenAI's specific use and timing. Additionally, it explores students' perceptions of the trustworthiness of GenAI outputs and identifies the students' ethical boundaries concerning its use in academic work. The findings reveal that while GenAI tools might enhance learning efficiency and provide substantial educational support, they raise significant ethical concerns, particularly regarding academic misconduct. The study highlights the need for educational strategies to navigate the challenges posed by GenAI technologies. Finally, three recommendations for computing education are outlined. This research contributes to the ongoing discourse on GenAI in education by describing the student's reflections on GenAI.

This full paper addresses the concept of metanarrative in computing and engineering education: the presence of an overarching meta-narrative which provides a sense of integration and some degree of connection and coherence to the elements under study. This meta-narrative should firstly provide a mechanism for discussing the fundamental entities under consideration, as well as the relationships between these and other, derived, concepts. Secondly, it should indicate what counts as valid knowledge, as well as legitimate ways of arriving at such knowledge. Thirdly, it should indicate how and where the concept of value arises in the content and practice of the subject. The meta-narrative should therefore provide a vehicle which encompasses the subject ontology, its epistemology and methodology, and its axiology (i.e., its ethics and aesthetics). In other words, the meta-narrative should provide a philosophy of that subject.

This Research-to-Practice WIP paper investigates how East Asian students studying in Sweden encounter various challenges. We discuss the discrepancy between our and previous findings and give recommendations. Background: Moving to and studying in a new country that is culturally different from their home country presents many challenges related to cultural differences to students. Intended Outcomes: This research aims to offer insights into how East Asian students adapt their learning strategies in Sweden and suggest how the university can support their lives and studies. Research Design: Six students were interviewed about their experiences studying in Sweden compared to studying at their home universities. Content analysis was performed to identify areas of interest. Findings: We report initial findings specifically related to academic and sociocultural issues.

As Artificial Intelligence (AI) continues to make its presence felt in transforming workplaces around the world, and the Information Technology industry in particular, it is essential to understand its impact on the work practices of IT professionals, and the implications for computing students and curricula. This research project builds on work initiated jointly, in Sweden, New Zealand and Scotland, investigating concerns about the increasing impacts of Artificial Intelligence in IT Sector workplaces for employee work engagement and the implications for tertiary study, assessment and curricula in computing. "Work engagement", has been defined as the positive inner state where employees are fully present and engaged in their work, and is closely linked to motivation, learning, productivity, and accountability. Within the context of (Generative) AI at work, IT professionals have been noted as early adopters of AI. Their involvement in implementing and utilising AI technologies can provide valuable insights into the interplay between AI and work engagement. The implications for students are significant as future IT professionals, who must acquire and enhance competencies to adapt and thrive in digital workplaces.

This Research-to-Practice Full Paper seeks to investigate the concept of Skill within a Competency Framework, such as that described by the CC2020 document. The notion of skill is fundamental to modern educational discourse. As educators, we strive, not only to impart knowledge, but to help students acquire the skills that they need to flourish in the modern academic and professional environments. We admire skillful practitioners and strive to become more skilled at what we do, recognising that skill is tied to an aesthetic sense - that there is something attractive and deeply satisfying about the process and output of skillful practice. Together with knowledge and disposition, the term is also used to denote one of the constituent components of competence. In computing, for example, the CC2020 document proposes curricular development models which promote skills as key ontological elements and emphasises skill acquisition as a major focus in the educational process. While this is undoubtedly an important, evolutionary development in discipline-based pedagogical practice, we feel that there are still foundational questions to be asked about precisely what is meant by definitional terms that form the core vocabulary of this approach. In this paper, we look at the notion of skill and provide a conceptual analysis which tries to distinguish it from other related ideas. We provide an overview of how skill has been seen historically as both a philosophical and sociological construct and what this means for using the term in educational theory. We examine how to usefully define skill, discuss the part it plays in teaching and assessment, and make recommendations for how it can be viewed operationally within a competency framework, such as that proposed by CC2020.

In this paper, we present a preliminary description of the field of inquiry encompassed by the philosophy of computing education. We first attempt to identify a general framework for investigating characteristic questions of a philosophical nature that arise within the STEM application domains. We describe the categories such questions fall under and use the philosophy of computing to illustrate this process. We also consider an alternative approach to identifying philosophical issues within a practical field, using the philosophy of education as an example. We consider the related subject of the philosophy of engineering education and see how this has recently emerged as an object of study in its own right. We investigate the similarities and differences between this field and the philosophy of computing education, and provide an initial description of the latter subject area. We also discuss how it relates to the subject referred to as Computing Education Research. Finally, we draw some conclusions about why there is this puzzling, apparent lack of interest in current work in this area, and suggest reasons why the pursuit of philosophical inquiry into computing education should be an important aspect of scholarly study in the subject.

Academic misconduct seems to have increased substantially during the pandemic, with a worldwide upsurge in reported cases. The aim of this project is to construct a framework for helping students engage with issues concerning academic integrity and avoid academic misconduct. This Work-In-Progress paper reports on the construction of a scenario-based framework to investigate the beliefs and attitudes of university stakeholders when confronted with decisions about potential academic misconduct. The framework will be based on using scenarios to spur individual reflections and discussions among the students regarding values related to academic integrity focusing on Uppsala University context. A repository of "misconduct" scenarios related to different cultures, including different views and regulations, is intended to support teachers to develop modules tailored to their current need. The underlying idea is to provide students with an understanding of what constitutes academic misconduct in Uppsala University setting and to help them find honest alternatives when faced with temptations to "cheat". Our view is that students, in general, want to behave honestly, and that this framework will provide a means to help students follow their moral "compass" and avoid dishonest behaviour.

While role models are frequently mentioned in literature to broaden participation in engineering education, there are diverse ways of understanding what role modeling is, what it entails and what theory we can use to support our own reflections as professionals and students in engineering who can act as role models for others in the discipline. In this special session we invite participants to discuss their own conceptions of role modeling, in terms of what can be modeled, the intention and awareness of it, and how this may be perceived by others. To support the discussions we introduce Grande’s framework of role modeling, which builds on role modeling theory. The format of the session will be that of a World Café, where participants will alternate their participation in discussions at five different tables, each table with a theme related to the framework. With these conversations we expect participants to go back to their own contexts in academia and industry to continue the discussion with their colleagues. We also invite them to connect with facilitators and others at the session to continue research efforts in the area of role modeling in engineering education.

We present a long-term study of how university students experienced teaching/learning activities throughout the Covid-19 pandemic in Denmark1. We collected data through questionnaires from N=365 students enrolled in the "Introduction to Database Systems" course during four consecutive semesters (Spring 2020 to Fall 2021). The two years span the entire period of the pandemic’s interruption of normal on-site teaching, until restrictions were completely lifted in Denmark. The study investigates student preferences for online versus onsite teaching, and identifies the advantages of both, as well as changes in preferences throughout the pandemic. Quantitatively, the results demonstrate a preference for on-site over online teaching which was more pronounced for exercise classes than for lectures. Qualitatively, the study identifies several advantages of both online and on-site teaching; including a more engaging learning environment and better teacher-student interaction for on-site lectures, and flexibility and self-paced learning for online teaching. The primary changes identified were an increased sense of being able to focus online and a decrease in ease of asking questions online towards the later stages of the pandemic. Finally, we highlight the opportunity for universities to provide hybrid models of teaching, in order to care for diverse student preferences and needs.

The global Covid19 pandemic which began in early 2020 is one of the most socially disruptive events to have occurred since the Second World War. It has left a profound mark on the institutions of society, including those charged with education, and its effects will be felt for many years. In this paper, we discuss some of the effects that public health policies have had on the practice of teaching, learning and assessment in the United Kingdom. We review at some of the literature on how current students have coped with the experience of education during Covid and look at potential difficulties that new students may now face when entering university. We suggest that the concept of phronesis, that is practical wisdom or prudential judgement, which can also be thought of as the faculty for making deliberative and evaluative judgements about courses of action, will be a crucial element of any recovery pedagogy since the problems faced are context-dependent and generally involve finding the most effective solutions among a range of options.

This Research Full Paper explores different implementations of and teachers’ experiences from challenge-driven education and similar learning approaches in engineering education and other higher education contexts. Through an action research approach key concerns among the teachers and similarities and differences between the studied courses can be identified. The study highlights the potential in these learning approaches, as means for breaking and going beyond the traditional boundaries of higher education, enhancing and cross-fertilizing engineering education with other disciplines, and empowering students both as professionals and humans. It also indicates potential barriers and in-built tensions that are crucial to handle for successful implementation. The study further shows on great opportunities for mutual learning and collaboration between teachers from diverse contexts and backgrounds. The findings are discussed in relation to research within domains such as sustainability education, transformative learning, and futures studies, and opportunities for further research and development are outlined.

This work contributes to a better understanding of computing teachers' perceptions of themselves as role models. Role models are described as important to address under-representation, yet there is little in-depth research on how role modeling works and what university teachers in computing can model to broaden participation in the discipline. We will analyze teachers' reflections on how they may, or want to, be perceived by their students, particularly in terms of professional competencies, emotions and attitudes towards well-being. We will use and further develop an already existing framework on role modeling in computing, and we will relate our findings to existing research on computing and science identities. Modeling aspects outside the computing norm can help provide students with a wider notion of what it means to be a computer scientist. Besides developing the theoretical understanding of computing teachers as role models , our work can support various ways of developing computing teachers' competences and departments' teaching culture. The results are one way to contribute to student diversity and equitable access, and more broadly increase the relevance of computing education for sustainability.

IEEE/ASEE Frontiers in Education turned 50 at the 2020 virtual conference in Uppsala, Sweden. This paper presents an historical retrospective on the first 50 years of the conference from a scientometric perspective. That is to say, we explore the evolution of the conference in terms of prolific authors, communities of co-authorship, clusters of topics, and internationalization, as the conference transcended its largely provincial US roots to become a truly international forum through which to explore the frontiers of educational research and practice. The paper demonstrates the significance of FIE for a core of 30% repeat authors, many of whom have been members of the community and regular contributors for more than 20 years. It also demonstrates that internal citation rates are low, and that the co-authoring networks remain strongly dominated by clusters around highly prolific authors from a few well known US institutions. We conclude that FIE has truly come of age as an international venue for publishing high quality research and practice papers, while at the same time urging members of the community to be aware of prior work published at FIE, and to consider using it more actively as a foundation for future advances in the field.

It might be a challenge for a STEM researcher to engage in research that is not directly relevant to his or her own field of specialization. The CUP EASTEM course, described in this paper, aims to support academic Asian STEM teachers in overcoming the challenge of researching their own teaching practices. In this paper we discuss, with CUP EASTEM, as a case study, how we have supported academic STEM teachers to take the steps needed to conduct research on their own teaching practices. The key is to broaden the perspective to also include theoretically sound, qualitative interpretative research. Furthermore, this is a journey that must be made without losing sight of the object of the students' learning, that is, the fundamental concepts within the STEM disciplines.

This is a full research paper addressing the crucial element of understanding students when creating learning environments. It is for instance important to be aware of how students appreciate our way of teaching and to consider consequences of students not understanding or plainly disliking a setup. This paper addresses the negative experiences of students in a peer-learning environment named the self-flipped classroom. Through the lens of a theory of personal epistemology we investigate course evaluation reports and observations from anonymous students. Results indicate that the personal epistemology framework indeed gives some answers to students disliking the self-flipped aspect of the course, and that some students would rather be told what to learn in detail as in the quote: “why don't you tell me what I need to know?”. Finally the paper presents some ideas on ways forward.

This Research Full Paper introduces a model for structuring playful, challenge-based learning activities drawing on a process of decontextualisation of a challenge to access its Computational Thinking intellectual and conceptual components and subsequent computationalisation of these components into computational artifacts that are recontextualised to render them attractive and accessible to school pupils. The case study follows a thick description approach to evaluating the engagement potential of the instructional design, as well as the didactic choices made during implementation. We conclude that Bebras cards and Dash robots provide considerable support for a playful engagement with computational concepts and engaging children with different scientific backgrounds in Computational Thinking. In particular, flexibility in how they are used and easy adaptation of challenge level make them useful in contexts with broad participation. Additionally we find that using robots to provide a link between the theoretical presentation of CT in the Bebras card and a physical representation and programming challenge is engaging and helps participants to focus on algorithmic concepts.

This Research Full Paper presents work which links a consideration of the concept of context with that of learning competency and that of educational authenticity in STEM subjects. The word “context” is very familiar in both everyday language and in educational settings. However, because of its ubiquity, it is often taken for granted that both educators and students know what it means, and how it is being used. This paper reviews the concept of context, using the typology developed by Dohn et al. We draw attention to the way in which this can be applied to the notion of competence, specifically, the competence framework developed by Frezza et al, and consider how the concept underlies the idea of authentic learning. We argue that a clear understanding of authenticity depends critically on both students and academics being able to discriminate between the different types of contexts that occur in authentic assessment processes, such as projects based on real-world scenarios. We also consider contextual categories when describing the different ways in which learning can be transferred.

Researchers in futures studies argue that the future needs to be understood as uncertain, as not yet there. This renders mainstream educational discourses problematic, those that centre around the idea of preparing students for “the future”, defining competencies and standards. In this work, we write about critiques of contemporary education and alternative conceptions of education drawing on futures studies as well as sustainability education research. We understand learning as an emergent phenomenon and describe a conception of education that we refer to as emergentist education. We apply those theories to an open-ended group project course at an IT department at a large Swedish university. In the course, the students and the teachers develop, together with staff from an Academic Hospital in Sweden, healthcare with IT. In an action-research approach, we analyse written and oral reflections from the various actors involved in the course with the aim to understand the course, its value and challenges in new ways. Analysing the data through the lens of emergentist education theory, we discuss three themes: 1) forces on openness, 2) orientations to the future, and 3) emergent collaborative learning and novelty. We find that the educators take the role of maintaining openness, while the students demand a clear project definition. The future orientation turned out to be mostly about correcting and optimising the present. Yet, this project led to mutual learning and new paths being taken. Education can be a place for creativity and novelty, and an opportunity for learning through joint endeavours.

Competency-based learning has been a successful pedagogical approach for centuries, but only recently has it gained traction within computing education. Building on recent developments in the field, this working group will explore competency-based learning from practical considerations and show how it benefits computing. In particular, the group will identify existing computing competencies and provide a pathway to generate competencies usable in the field. The working group will also investigate appropriate assessment approaches, provide guidelines for evaluating student attainment, and show how accrediting agencies can use these techniques to assess the level of competence reflected in their standards and criteria. Recommendations from the working group report are intended to help practical computing education writ large.

In this Special Session participants explore role modeling in the context of IEEE/ASEE Frontiers in Education (FIE). Role models are important in engineering education, due to their being beneficial for those who have them. While educators and other professionals may strive to be role models for others, there is little research in this area to support this goal. How do we talk about role models? How can we reflect on what we can model and how, as individuals and through giving visibility to others? Conferences like FIE are great venues to provide participants with role models. What kind of role models are FIE attendees after? In this special session participants at any career stage are introduced to Grande's theory of role modeling to address these questions. The groups will use Grande's theory to reflect on what kind of role models they would find interesting to look for in FIE. This aims to increase reflection on role modeling by the participants while also informing the organization of the event, who can consider increasing the visibility of the identified potential role models. Participants can later use a similar process to reconsider their role modeling in other areas, e.g. as teachers for their students, managers for their employees, or as conference organizers to analyze what kind of role models they are inviting to their events.

The aim of this special session is to connect researchers interested in computing and engineering education for sustainability. We will explore the use of care and care ethics as a theoretical perspective to develop sustainability education. Theoretical discussions in environmental and sustainability education (ESE) research and feminist research will be introduced to develop an understanding of care for education. Those theories will be illustrated and motivated based on concrete examples in computing and computing education. The participants get to choose among four different topics of discussion in the session, 1) the role of education to prepare for care, 2) theoretical discussions of care as a concept to develop education and education research, 3) pedagogical methods to foster care, 4) care and responsibility in the curriculum. The outcome of this session is two-fold: The participants will gain new ways of conceiving education for human and planetary well-being and they will get to know researchers and educational developers with an interest in and experiences with sustainability education.

In this Work in Progress paper, we discuss why including professional competencies into computing education curriculum is important. We are particularly interested in competencies that students could and, we believe, should acquire during collaborative learning experiences in project-based IT courses. In the times of globalization and technological advancement, there is a need for competencies like collaborating, communicating, working in interdisciplinary and multicultural teams, while computing education tends to focus on content knowledge and technical skills. Which is contrary to the emphasis companies put on soft skills in a hiring situation. This discussion and reflection paper discuss how employability, and identity frameworks can be used to analyse professional competencies in a project course environment in Norway? This paper focuses on how professional competencies should be implemented in the curriculum of computing degree programs and courses in the Norwegian university system. We use Curtin's graduate attributes" framework used by an Australian university as an example of learning outcomes that emphasize professional competencies. In this conceptual paper we discuss how putting more emphasis on graduate attributes, employability and identity can help to legitimize diverse ways of participation in the computing discipline and at the same time broaden the identity of the computing discipline.

In this Research Full Paper we look at IT students' experiences from collaborative project-based courses at two Norwegian universities through the lens of "Curtin graduate attributes". Many universities use lists of graduate attributes, sometimes referred to as competencies, generic skills, or capabilities that graduates should acquire during their studies. For the time being, these two Norwegian higher education institutions have not implemented graduate attributes into their curricula, though there are several ongoing initiatives that promote students' employability and development of professional competencies. Through interviews, observations, and thematic analysis with overtones of grounded theory, we aim to identify Norwegian IT students' perceptions of professional competencies acquired at project-based learning courses. The findings are analysed through the use of the identity and employability frameworks, taking into consideration the cultural context. This paper answers two research questions: 1) What professional competencies do students acquire in project-based learning settings? 2) How do project-based learning courses support the development of employability and identity? We have identified that putting more emphasis on graduate attributes can help to legitimise diverse ways of participation in the computing discipline and at the same time broaden its identity.

This paper presents an investigation of a pedagogical approach where student act as prosumers of peer-generated knowledge. A cohort of computing science students were tasked to interview field experts, and then produced a report of the interview results in the form of a short video accompanied by a written summary. The reports were used to facilitate learning about aspects and phases of IT systems life cycle. This paper investigates student and instructor attitudes to and experiences of this pedagogical approach. Our findings suggest that the students were generally not ready for this learning method, which led to the "love it or hate it" split within the observed cohort. While the instructing team was convinced of the benefits of the used pedagogical approach and planned to continue using it in future, they were faced with a number of challenges. The biggest of those challenges was that the instructors had no control over the quality of teaching materials, which affected learning experience of the students. This paper's findings contribute to the understanding of CS student and instructor expectations, attitudes, and experiences of non-traditional teaching and learning activities such as creating videos and reusing student-produced multi-media materials.

It often happens that some students come to engage in their learning, and in the learning of their peers, far beyond what we, or they, would have expected. There is also ample evidence of the opposite experience, where students, even if initially highly motivated, end up unable to engage in a meaningful manner. In this paper, we analyse three courses in order to better understand why the level of student engagement varies to such a high degree, with the aim of opening for seeing underlying factors explaining this. Further, we illustrate and discuss our framework with empirical data collected from at Uppsala University. We study the courses using different research approaches (or perspectives), based in the sociocultural tradition, namely Activity Theory (as described by Engeström), Zone of Proximal Development (Vygotsky), and Communities of Practice (Lave & Wenger). These approaches serve as lenses with the aim of finding common factors in the learning environments that are collectively created by the students and their teachers during the extent of the courses. Our results point towards the need to establish a joint understanding between students and teachers at several different levels: at a course level in terms of the aim of a course and its possible outcomes, but also personal aims related to what the course could lead to for everyone involved. Further, our research suggests that the supporting and scaffolding role of the teacher is crucial to the development of a positive learning environment in a course.

Quality assurance processes in education have been a key area of engineering education development for several decades. ABET, ENQA - The European Association for Quality Assurance in Higher Education, as well as other agencies in Europe and the Asia Pacific have largely converged on a set of high level graduate outcomes, widely considered to be those most relevant to the engineering professions. We suggest that outcome assessment can be classified into four major approaches, education as a service (with the focus on identifying customers), as a process (with a focus on describing the formative impact of curriculum on learners), as a Body of Knowledge (with a focus on transmission of that knowledge and the generation of artefacts), and finally as expansion of the individual (focusing on holistic development of the intellect).

The learning agreement has great potential as a learning intervention that supports learners to take ownership of their learning and to develop in ways that are meaningful to them. It is useful to educate a diverse student cohort. In a project course as the one investigated in this study, the learning agreement intervention can be beneficial to make use of the different experiences and competencies that a diverse student group brings to the table. In practice however, the learning agreement invention is uncommon in education and not well understood. As it is used in the present study, it is essentially a document in which the students describe competencies that they want to develop, as well as how they will develop and assess those competencies. This study has investigated the learning agreement intervention as it was conducted in an open-ended group project, in particular a workshop to improve the quality and usefulness of the students' learning agreements. Two versions of learning agreements, the one before the workshop and the one after, from 19 students were analysed, as well as semi-structured interview data with the students. We find that many learning agreements are of little use, even after the workshop. A qualitative thematic analysis suggests that the students experience the learning agreement and workshop as useful but that they still struggle with the learning agreement, particularly with describing activities to develop and assess their learning. We derive ideas for how to improve the learning agreement intervention, e.g. by integrating it more with the project work.

This research aimed at evaluating the development and use of low-cost affective domain assessment instruments, culminating with personal and group characterization of representative global information technology (IT) professional values. Values and valuing are a compelling component of Bloom's affective domain of learning for engineering education. In helping students develop professional engineering competencies, it is essential that they develop not just cognitive knowledge of something but also values related to that knowledge and the ability to express these values in professional action. However, even if some professional values are identified, understood, and expressed, assessing students’ values and valuing are difficult, and assessment instruments are often difficult to develop, particularly for assessing student learning in the context of a particular course. This exploratory study aimed at examining assessment of dispositional knowledge in the context of global software engineering (GSE). It focused on the development and use of a set of instruments for assessing affective domain student learning of global IT/software engineering (SE) professional values. The project included making explicit the IT professional values of interest among the participating faculty in the form of actionable value statements. Following a process derived from Thurstone scale development, the project included validation of these statements with an expert panel as question roots, followed by the use of these questions to investigate student and alumni receiving, responding, and valuing of these professional values. The effort needed to generate questionnaires suitable for course use was relatively low; these questionnaires were deployed to students and alumni from an open-ended global software engineering project course. Students responding reported significant agreement when receiving these global values, but sent more mixed responses in responding to and valuing them. The effort helped identify several actionable IT professional values worth reinforcing in future course offerings.

Literature on global employability signifies “enabling” learning environments where students encounter ill-formed and open-ended problems and are required to adapt and be creative. Varying forms of “projects,” co-located and distributed, have populated computing curricula for decades and are generally deemed an answer to this call. We performed a qualitative study to describe how project course students are able to capitalize on the promise of enabling learning environments. This critical perspective was motivated by the circumstance of the present-day education systems being heavily regulated for the precipitated production of human capital. The students involved in our study described education system-imposed and group-imposed narratives of narrowed opportunities, as well as many self-related challenges. However, students welcomed autonomy as an enjoyable condition and linked it with motivation. Whole-group commitment and self-related attributes such as taking care of one’s own learning appeared as important conditions. The results highlight targets for interventions that can counteract constraining study conditions and continue the march of projects as a means to foster complex learning for the benefit of students and professionalism in global software engineering.

We examine controversial issues surrounding the locus of control in the implementation of learning agreements, plans or contracts, in the context of the U.K. university-level Graduate Apprenticeship scheme. We begin by giving an account of the stakeholders and their positions as well as their motivating principles as they strive to maintain their respective loci of control with regard to the negotiation of the learning agreement. We then describe the idiomatic challenges to implementation of a learning agreement and subsequent plan in work-based learning environments with a range of employers from different sectors. An investigation into the manner in which learning agreement tenets are changed due to competing pressures on the various stakeholders leads to a discussion of challenges to successful prioritisation of the learning plan that occur as a result of mutually exclusive requirement sets. We discuss the challenges that may present themselves in which the requirements of one set of stakeholders appear to conflict with others and the questions that are raised as those involved seek to ensure suitable standards of academic quality in difficult cases. Finally, we discuss whether learning agreements are the most appropriate operational instruments for maintaining standards in these circumstances.

This full paper in the research track presents how individuals in computing education may have role models that represent different ways of engaging in the discipline and/or profession as a student or a professional. The study is based on two rounds of interview-based data collection at a department of computing: a longitudinal study of undergraduate students' view of the discipline, and an examination of their teachers' experiences as role models in computing education. Our results challenge traditional views of role models as those who set the norms, presenting instead role models as potentially capable of change, at different scales (including none), depending on their level of power. These role models are students, academics, and other professionals. We show that the potential of role models must be understood with respect to how engagement in computing is constructed in social interaction. Actions are suggested for relevant stakeholders to reflect on which role models are receiving more or less exposure than they should and how through these role models participation in computing can be broadened in terms of not only diverse backgrounds but also ways of engaging in computing.

One of the most significant changes in Higher Education pedagogy that has occurred over the past fifty years is the idea that university students should not just be taught theoretical subject knowledge but should engage with practical aspects of their course so developing the skills and professional competences that will allow them to gain successful employment after graduation. In this paper, we relate this development to the Aristotelian notion of intellectual virtue and specifically the concept of phronesis. We discuss the way in which this idea has developed from classical beginnings to the modern educational setting, and argue that the notion of phronesis, that is, practical wisdom or prudential judgement, is crucial to a range of activities which are fundamental to science, engineering and computing education. These include an understanding of what it means to engage in authentic learning and the solution of open-ended or ill-structured problems. We also discuss the role the concept plays in describing key features of work-based learning. Finally, we make some comments concerning the relative value the education system places on different types of knowledge, and why an appropriate understanding of phronesis allows for a proper appreciation of contingent knowledge within the curriculum.

Education can be seen as a preparation for a future profession, where some educational programs very clearly prepare their students for a certain profession, e.g. plumber, nurse and architect. The possible professions for students following education programs in computing is quite varied and thus difficult to cater for, but to educate towards a professional life is still a stated goal in most higher education settings. We argue that this goal is typically not even closely reached and provide an analysis indicating factors explaining this situation. The analysis is based on the concept of professional identity.In earlier work [1] a framework with which to reason about student interactions with the regulatory structure of higher education and teachers was developed. In that paper we developed a compound model which not only relates these players to one another, but also provides approaches to reasoning about misalignments which arise when students and teachers approach their shared learning context from different perspectives. This framework is in this paper applied to address different aspects of professional identity with the intent of bringing forth deeper insights into challenges with educating towards professions. This issue is highly complex and the framework provides a structure that is beneficial for analysing different aspects in a more holistic manner.

Learning outcomes are a standard specification of knowledge, skills and capabilities that a student is expected to acquire by attending a course or a degree program. While, in theory, the process of evaluating learning outcomes appears to be trivial, in practice it is a complicated and daunting process. In this study, we evaluate how learning outcomes can be effectively applied. The work focuses on the quality of both the specification of the learning outcomes and the assessment of whether these outcomes are reached. We discuss different abstraction levels for learning outcomes and the issue of alignment between high-level and low-level learning outcomes. We also address the criteria for assessing whether a student is meeting a learning outcome. Our work is focused on project-oriented courses, where assessing learning outcomes is seen as particularly challenging. In particular, we draw on an empirical study focused on systematically collecting key performance indicators of the progress towards achieving learning outcomes. The data gathering was done during the course through in-class questionnaires and individual diary notes, as a complementary process to the traditional observations made by the teacher running the course. This data serves as the basis for understanding how individual students advance towards the stated learning goals. We also conducted a focus group discussion after the course to better understand how to interpret the data collected during the course. An important result of our work is forming an understanding and vocabulary regarding learning outcomes and the assessment of how well students meet these learning goals in project-based educational settings. In addition to this, we make the following major contributions: •We present a systematic methodology to gauge how well students meet learning outcomes through in-class self-evaluation.•We present the results of an empirical study of a process-oriented evaluation of the students' development towards stated learning outcomes.•We state some lessons learned from this process that are applicable for designers of project-based courses.

In the modern fast changing world no formal education is able to provide learners with a complete set of knowledge, skills and competences that they would need to successfully compete on tomorrow's job market. Therefore, the role of universities is increasingly shifting towards provision of an environment where students have a chance to acquire lifelong learning skills. This paper presents underlying ideas of, and practical experiences with, an innovative pedagogy that addresses the lifelong learning skills acquisition along with additional benefits for science and technology students. The proposed approach, called self-flipped classroom (SFC), is built on a synergy of two pedagogies: learning through making and flipped classroom. To unveil the construct of the SFC, we discuss each of its components individually presenting appropriate theoretical grounding. We also report on our experiences from self-flipped classroom implementations in two countries, UK and Sweden, and in three different educational settings. From our work with the SFC concept we have identified four different roles the students can assume in a SFC scenario: creators, collaborators, communicators, and learners. We present our observations regarding the identified roles that have been found in the studied settings. We also outline some implications for teaching using the SFC concept and future research directions in this space.

This working group contributes to formulating a framework for modeling competencies in the current and future disciplines that comprise computing education. We draw upon the innovative approach taken in the curricular document for information technology (IT2017), curricular competency frameworks, other related documents such as the software engineering competency model (SWECOM), the Skills Framework for the Information Age (SFIA), current research in competency models, and elicitation workshop results from other computing conferences. The outcomes contribute to the Computing Curricula 2020 (CC2020) project, and include the formulation and review of sets of disciplinary-relevant competencies for use in computing education. This work directly informs the CC2020 project sponsored by the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) and the IEEE Computer Society.

One of the challenges in being a teacher is to set up an educational setting where the students receive relevant learning opportunities for the specific course, the students' education in general, and for their future. However, efforts to create such educational settings do not always work in the way that faculty has intended. In this paper we investigate one such effort seen from a critical incident perspective. Central to the analysis in this paper is how the Theory of Planned Behaviour (TPB) can provide explanations for the incident. The critical incident can be summarised as students refusing to take part in a non-compulsory, but from the faculty perspective highly educational, activity. We describe the incident in depth, give the background for the educational intervention, and analyse the incident from the perspective of TPB. This paper makes two major contributions to engineering education research. The first is the development of a method for analysing critical teaching and learning incidents using the TPB. The critical incident analysis illustrates how the method is used to analyse and reason about the students' behaviour. Another contribution is the development of a range of insights which deal with challenges raised by learning interventions, especially those involved with acquiring hidden or “invisible skills” not usually seen or acknowledged by students to belong to core subject area of a degree program.

Earlier studies have analyzed FIE and the community built around it, e.g. the origin, format, and future direction of the conference. We propose a new lens: that of diversity, with the motivation of identifying potential role models or the lack thereof. What is the evolution of the presence of diverse role models in FIE throughout the last decade? In this paper we analyze data containing the list of participants in the last 11 years of FIE. Since gender is not part of the registration form, we assume the gender of each participant based on the traditional gender assigned to their name. For the same reason, we use the traditional view of gender as binary. The results include the annual number of men and women attending the event, the attendees' roles in the conference divided by gender, the diversity in attendance based on the geographical location of the attendees' affiliations and the intersection with this aspect of the previous categories. We discuss future directions for the improvement of diversity in FIE and present possible expansions of this study.

A key component of the tertiary education system is the negotiation of common expectations in terms of pedagogy and the manner in which learning is scaffolded in the learning context. This paper addresses this interplay of perspectives by drawing on two elements of our previous work, a longitudinal study of student identity development [1] and a study contrasting project course students' experiences with teachers' expectations [2]. The paper develops a model of student interaction with teachers and the higher education system, which contributes to a better understanding of the consequences of recent changes and trends in higher education, e.g. demands for activating students, increased level of detail in course specifications, and examination of “non-core subject content”. This is an immensely complex area and we approach this challenge with a focus on the issue of students rejecting learning opportunities. Through this lens we will identify and illustrate some essential aspects of how to adapt educational settings to better accommodate how students behave and view the goal of their education.

One of the most important areas of competence for professional engineers is the ability to function well in project work, in particular they need to be able to efficiently solve open-ended problems in different collaborative settings. The development of this ability is however not prominent in engineering education despite numerous authors suggesting open-ended problems as a pedagogical tool to promote development of collaborative problem solving competence by including elements of group or project work in courses. In our own long experience of using open-ended problems in collaborative student projects, we have identified a lack of systematic progression in learning outcomes and skill development. We see this as a major obstacle for fully exploiting the potentials of using open-ended problems as an educational tool. We present a framework that provides a structured view of challenges related to openness that students can encounter in educational projects and that has an impact on the overall complexity of the project. We argue that there are different categories of openness to consider when designing educational settings based on open-ended projects. The categories addressed in this paper are: Character of the problems addressed. Character of the teams. Time constraints. Faculty involvement. External factors. Aspects of openness in the different categories are presented and related to professional engineering competencies. Furthermore, it is discussed how variations in project complexity can be accomplished by variations within the aspects and combinations of aspects. In particular, the framework addresses development and progression of professional competencies.

Globalisation of both the workplace and higher education is a fact for many Universities and Industries. For the universities the challenge lies both in identifying the needs and developing pedagogies suitable for preparing their students to become a workforce that can contribute in a global economy. Thus, a central issue is how to provide an appropriate level of background knowledge and skills which contribute to the success of the individual in the workplace, and to the success of their employers. Helping students develop the skills required for success in global software development teams provides a number of unique challenges and opportunities for the designers of engineering degree programmes. A central issue is that students bring with them local cultural norms, different native languages, and rhetorical traditions, which place an additional burden to the already difficult task of working effectively in a student engineering team. The contribution of this paper is the presentation of two learning activities; 1) structured role-play and 2) hypothetical archetypes, used within a method we call the “Archetype Learning Method” (ALM). The activities are geared towards enhancing the students' awareness of the underlying complexities inherent in participating in global software engineering and through that provide scaffolding to the development of teamwork skills. Our method provides students with strategies for engaging more productively in teamwork in a global context, hence contributing to the systematic development of one of the critical professional skills identified in the CHAOS report.

The attempt to embed Authenticity within the learning process in higher education has been a driving principle within many pedagogical approaches to Higher Education developed over the past three decades. The desire to allow students to learn in a manner that closely resembles the way in which expertise is developed outside the academic environment is a central element of problem-based, inquiry-based and project-based learning. Exploring the implications of authenticity for student achievement and the ways in which this should be assessed has led to innovative teaching methods and ways of evaluating student performance. Unfortunately, authenticity, and authentic assessment in particular, are concepts which are open to a range of interpretations, not least in an educational context where they may be used by both teachers and students with a variety of meanings. This paper investigates the working definitions of authentic assessment used by teaching staff within a Computing department in one U.K. university. We begin by giving an overview of some relevant aspects of authentic learning, which, historically, draws on pedagogies such as situated learning and social learning theory. We then focus on authenticity in the assessment process and describe a number of models which have been used to identify elements that contribute to this range of meaning. We analyse the descriptions of authentic assessment given by academic staff in terms of these concepts and suggest a framework which can be used to integrate the responses and characterise staff understanding of the authenticity. We then briefly compare these findings with other work investigating student responses to the same question and draw conclusions concerning the relevance of these factors on curriculum development, the use of assessment to drive learning and the role of staff development in promoting positive change in these areas. Finally, we make suggestions for further work.

The problem of how best to assess student learning is a fundamental one in education. Changes to computer science curricula seek to emphasise teaching practices that promote deep learning through direct, contextual examination of student performance on tasks that resemble those of practitioners, rather than more traditional methods. This kind of "authentic assessment" is becoming more popular as it appears to incorporate employability skills associated with professional practice into the curriculum in a natural way.

I'm going to address the educator identity from two perspectives. The first is my own perspective, where I will present what my educator identity means to me and what this has led me to devote time and energy on. My vision is that I want to be part of creating learning environments that benefit both the learner as an individual and society in general from many dimensions and purposes. As an educator I want to support our students on a route to become able and conscious graduates who will have a positive impact and be seen as truly professionally competent wherever their career takes them. This sounds hunky-dory, but how can it be achieved? I don't think there are any silver bullets that will lead to such a setting, but I do believe that knowing more is a way forward. Having no clear way forward was frustrating and this is where involvement in educator communities, like the SIGCSE community, became essential. Giving time and effort to such communities is, in my opinion, rewarding itself manyfold, not least, in my case, for aiding to understand the issues and opportunities involved in pursuing my vision. Developing my identity as educator through being part of the SIGCSE community, with its abundance of role models, has been invaluable for me. I hope my work will be an inspiration for others. Computing and engineering education research is the other big part in my strive for fulfilling my educator dreams. Or should I say pipe dreams as in the title of my thesis "Developing and Assessing Professional Competencies: a Pipe Dream? Experiences from an Open-Ended Group Project Learning Environment", which I defended on the day thirty years after I enrolled as a PhD student? No, I don't see it as a pipe dream even though there are much more to look into and understand regarding education in our field. This research area is the second perspective I want to bring up regarding educator identity, and I will use the research lens to look at the impact we as educators have on our students. My focus will be on the influence educators have on students learning with regard to aspects beyond pure computing skills. I will in the presentation build on work in our research group (UpCERG), which lately has included studying issues related to identity, both students and educators. I especially want to draw attention to the potential impact we as educators have on the "gap" between graduating truly professionally competent persons and merely technically competent persons.

An ITiCSE 2015 conference working group report has recently delivered a comprehensive systematic review of the literature addressing the challenges and solutions in teaching global software engineering courses. In this panel session, a group of authors of that report will review the findings, and present their own views on teaching such courses, the pros and cons and their own motivations and experiences, together with strategies that have proven effective. We argue that these courses are critical for preparing students for practice as software engineers in today's global settings, but they are certainly not for the faint-hearted. After the review and presentation of position statements by panelists there will be a question and answer session with the audience and a discussion elaborating on the next frontiers in research and practice for global software engineering education.

Active learning is a popular concept for motivating learning. Learning agreements are one strategy towards this goal. They can be used to aid the students to take ownership of their learning and in becoming more active in a course. Learning Agreements are especially useful tools for scaffolding learning in courses with a focus on developing the professional competencies of students, such as in Open Ended Group Projects, Work Integrated Learning or other authentic learning contexts. Such educational contexts are complex and we have found it necessary to scaffold student learning using agreements based on professional competencies. This has led to a pedagogical framework, which has found successful application in a number of contexts. This framework has been built based on discussions with students, and has involved the development of a supporting wiki which contains descriptions of the different professional competencies involved in the learning agreement. The IT based framework has been iteratively developed together with the students taking the course in the fall of 2015. The development and assessment of this framework is contrasted in the context of two courses using learning agreements, one (in Sweden) with a focus on development of professional competencies and the other (in New Zealand) addressing a mix of professional competencies and subject knowledge in a work integrated learning setting.

Quality assurance is a subject that has grown dramatically in importance in recent times. In previous work, we have described how the ACM Curricula can be used to support the Quality Assurance process of educational programs, using the Computer Science program at Reykjavik University as an example. Faculty members and employers of graduates participated in the process, that resulted in providing both detailed quantitative data and qualitative information. The assessment also raised awareness of how abstract topics and learning outcomes from an international standard can be used when revising the curricula of a particular course in a CS program. Quality assurance is indeed a continuous process, where the results of evaluations should be used to drive improvements. In this paper we focus on how a Database course was re-structured based on a recent quality assurance process.

How can students be included as critical stakeholders in the systems and services provided by a university? To address the whole student experience, we engaged students and employees at a large Swedish university in a vision seminar process to elicit how these groups envisioned an ideal future university, and the necessary changes to technology and organisational structures required to achieve this ideal version. The process entailed six four-hour workshops with four groups consisting of six participants each. A survey instrument was used to follow up on the participants' experiences of participating in the vision seminar process and their thoughts on the future of the university. The results show that the participating students were more positive compared to the university employees. The students envisioned harmonized interdepartmental systems, seamlessly integrating a variety of services into one university-provided solution. The employees envisioned their future work as flexible, enabled by technology providing excellent support without hindering pedagogical and organisational development. Using technological frames, these visions of the future are identified, analysed and discussed in relation to the quality of university education and a holistic view on students' university experience. Finally we discuss the broader implications of the visions on the future of university education.

Student-centric education has emerged as a dominant aspect of Higher Education policy over the last two decades. Much has been written about the benefits of student active educational approaches, and applied educational research, for instance the meta-study of Hattie, places emphasis on student-centric learning practices that enhance achieved learning outcomes. Most existing studies have been evaluations of single courses. In contrast this study focusses on the complete study context of the learner, who typically is in the situation of reading two or three courses simultaneously. Our primary goal in this paper is to explore potential challenges as we attempt to scale up active learning to encompass the full curricula. We use a mixture of interview and survey data collected from staff, combined with course schedules and student input to explore some of the potential implications of mandating a student-centric approach over an entire curriculum.

How students develop professional competencies has been an interest for me for decades. There are several aspects to this issue that I have addressed, e.g. what are professional competencies, how can their development of them be supported in educational settings, what motivates a student to put in an effort towards developing a competency, how can they be assessed, how can progression of professional competencies be handled in education curricula, and how can development of professional competencies be specified in a course description. These are among the more prominent issues that have been on my mind. In this work I have noticed a huge "gap" between how professional competencies are expressed as important learning outcomes of degree programs and the almost zero link to how this development should be done at the course instance level. This "gap" is frustrating for me and a source for thoughts regarding how to bridge that "gap". Work in our research group UpCERG (Uppsala Computing Education Research Group, www.it.uu.se/research/group/upcerg) has lately included studying issues related to identity, initially mostly the identity of different student cohorts, but now also that of teachers and education leaders. This research provides valuable insights towards causes for the "gap". That is, the slow closing of the "gap" can be understood by placing this in the context of the identity of the teachers (especially) and the students. It is how professional competencies are valued in relation to "pure" subject knowledge among these identities that provides severe obstacles to inclusion of development of professional competencies in a meaningful way at the course instance level. This is despite much of the previous work regarding issues related to developing professional competencies in educational settings, as those mentioned above.

We examine the concept of motivation from the perspective of Self Determination Theory and give a brief overview of relevant results. We also consider the optimal state known as "Flow" and give an account of its conceptualisation in the theory due to Csikszentmihalyi. After discussion of ways in which these concepts can be measured, we describe a set of preliminary studies that investigate motivation and flow in the context of a first year computing class. We analyse student responses to enquiries about perceptions of motivation and flow experiences and look at links between them. We also discuss intrinsic motivation within the subject.

The rapid development in the IT area brings a series of shifts, in underlying theories, technology and work practices. In the normal course of events, most changes are evolutionary, with small, incremental improvements being made to theoretical understanding or practical application. Occasionally, however, changes occur of such magnitude that they do not just alter current operational practice but require a thorough reappraisal of the underlying assumptions on which that practice is based. In short, they require a review of the dominant way of thinking, or paradigm. Ability to adapt to evolving circumstances is critical, not only for industrial and commercial organisations, but also for individual employees, to survive and remain successful during paradigm shifts. How can we prepare our students so they can survive in a working life characterized by frequent paradigm shifts? It is important that CS and IT education prepares students for coping with shifts induced by technological development in their future careers, that students develop the competencies needed. To understand what competencies are needed, it is important to investigate characteristics among employees that have flourished in earlier paradigm shifts and not least to build knowledge on how to develop learning environments where such competencies and personal characteristics can be achieved This paper is about setting the stage for an action research project aimed at enhancing education with regard to being able to survive paradigm shifts in the IT industry.

Globally distributed group projects are becoming an attractive and increasingly common feature in computer science education. They provide opportunities for students to engage in activities that enhance both their technical skills and wider professional competencies with concomitant benefits for graduate employability. There have been some previous attempts to investigate these projects in terms of theories of technology use and collaborative learning, and this paper continues this process by examining globally distributed group projects from the perspective of salient issues in the fields of computer-supported cooperative work (CSCW) and computer-supported collaborative learning (CSCL). After detailing CSCW models that discuss the dimensions that characterise interaction and technology use in groups, we examine aspects of group learning from the perspective of theories of CSCL. Issues of cooperation versus collaboration, motivation for learning and models of group cognition are discussed in the context of two specific group projects. Analysis of these examples allows us to characterise behaviour within groups and provide insights that can facilitate the formation and effective development of project teams. This has important educational implications for the success of these distributed group projects.

With a goal of preparing software engineering students for practice in today's global settings, Uppsala University has for some years run courses involving global collaboration. The "IT in Society" course is one such course which applies an 'Open Ended Group Project' model, in partnership with a local health sector client and global educational partners. Within each iteration of the course, students across the partnering institutions are given a brief around an open-ended problem. They work in collaboration with their client and stakeholders to investigate options and produce a report with their findings and recommendations, informed by global perspectives. The report may or may not be supported by working software prototypes. We analyze student evaluations & reflections on the course to unpack their perceptions of software engineering, the perceived relevance of a global learning experience and its role in reshaping their identities as global software engineers.

We investigate the link between concepts of perseverance such as conscientiousness and grit, and the academic attainment of first year computing students. We review the role that perseverance plays in learning models, as well as describing the trait of conscientiousness in the Five Factor Model of personality. We outline research that links this trait with academic success, before focussing on more recent, narrower conceptualisations of perseverance such as academic tenacity and grit. We describe one of the questionnaire tools that have been used to assess the construct of grit. We give details of an investigation that looked for correlations between student responses to Duckworth's Grit Survey, the Big Five Inventory (BFI) Personality Survey and summative attainment scores in a first year programming course. The results suggest a weak but significant correlation between conscientiousness, grit and programming achievement. We discuss these results as well as the limitations of the method used. Finally, we make some observations about the importance of these concepts in Computer Science education and outline further work in this area.

Better knowledge of the habits and preferences of patients helps one understand why and how patients might need or want to access health services online and offline. Such knowledge provides a basis for designing systems for providing complementary health information. This article discusses how patients' conceptualizations of their health‐information‐related preferences, motivations, and needs are linked to the perceived role of medical records as an informational artifact. We identified seven subject positions: (P1) Hypothetically positive to e‐health services generally, (P2) Positive to reading medical records due to implications, (P3) Positive to all Internet use including medical records online, (P4) Distrustful and wants to be in control of health treatment, (P5) Worried about health, (P6) Wants communication with health care professionals, and (P7) Do not understand their medical record. These subject positions can explain the worry and enthusiasm documented in earlier literature. The diversity of subject positions implies that health care information services should be planned with different subject positions in mind rather than a simple demographic group. Special attention needs to be given to finding flexible solutions that address the opportunities and worries of the identified subject positions.

Critical thinking is one of the key competencies listed by OECD (Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development) [1], a central European Community organization, and is also mentioned as a learning outcome for higher education by international organizations, such as ABET, ACM, and IEEE, as well as in numerous national and university legislations regarding higher education degrees. The ability to communicate, not least in writing, is another important competence our students are supposed to gain during their education. There is thus high agreement regarding the importance of these competencies, but it is not clear how to achieve this.

This paper examines some aspects of the Quality Assurance processes in Computing departments in three European universities. We first examine the operation of a quality assurance activity in the School of Computer Science in Iceland. The next case is an example from Sweden and finally we present a case from the United Kingdom. In each case, we examine the motivation for the outcome-based assurance methodologies that predominate in countries that are engaged in the Bologna Process in terms of the use of competence-based assessment. We compare the application of these processes to departmental review, focusing on the aims and objectives, who controls the process, the areas covered, the methodology and the use to which the information is put. We discuss some of the implications for teaching when different quality assurance processes are used and finally, we make some observations about the relatively sparse literature on Computing Education subject-specific quality assurance.

“Personal Epistemology” is the analysis of the ways in which an individual perceives what constitutes knowledge, its boundaries, how it is justified, and how it is related to learning. While investigation of metacognitive strategies used by students is now an established research topic within Computer Science and Information Technology education, the study of personal epistemology is relatively undeveloped. This is so despite there being significant epistemological issues associated with learning the subject itself, such as those concerned with the way in which programming exercises change from convergent to divergent problems, or the process by which software project management problems very quickly become ill-defined. In this paper, we describe a preliminary investigation into the personal epistemology of two cohorts of computing students. We review some models of personal epistemological development and describe an empirical study in which we investigated the dimensions of epistemological beliefs of two cohorts of computing students. The results show that there appears to be a wide range of epistemological belief amongst computing students. Finally, we make some observations about the importance of personal epistemology for learning in Computer Science and outline further work in this area.

In this paper, we investigate the personal epistemology of computing students, that is, their conceptions of knowledge and learning. We review some models of personal epistemological development and describe one of the questionnaire tools that have been used to assess the epistemological beliefs of students studying in other disciplines. We describe an experiment that uses one of these tools, together with exploratory factor analysis, to determine the dimensions of epistemological beliefs of a cohort of computing students and compare the results with that reported in other contexts. The results, while not reproducing the details of previous work, do seem to suggest that there are indeed multiple dimensions to personal epistemology, and that these can be identified, to a large extent, with those recognised by other researchers. Finally, we make some observations about the importance of personal epistemology for learning in Computer Science and outline further work in this area.

Possibilities for collaboration in globally distributed projects have radically changed with the introduction of new Collaborative Technologies (CTs) in the Web 2.0 era. The use of such technologies in the context of students collaborating in a globally distributed project is little explored in research. A better understanding would provide opportunities for improving the collaboration, and more importantly is that a better understanding would improve the possibility of scaffolding, and student learning in general. In this paper we present results from a study of students' use of CTs in a globally distributed project with a focus on the challenges encountered in trying to collaborate using this technology. The study is focused on a few aspects of how a combination of CTs could be utilized and issues associated with their set up and adaption for use. We discuss potential reasons for the observed patterns of technology use and how they influenced the collaboration environment around a globally distributed student project.

Knowledge and experience from working in international collaborative projects prepares engineering students for their future careers in a global market. Hence this is an important element in higher education, although seldom provided in the curriculum. One reason for this lack might be uncertainty in how to manage international collaborations and to create a good learning environment for the development of skills related to international collaborations. Therefore this article describes our experiences from managing international student collaborations including theoretical underpinning for our choices when relevant. Having given the context of, and the strategies for running our two collaborations, we provide an analysis of our experiences. This includes observations of differences in the two collaborations, both when due to use of different strategies and when due to different contexts, as well as observations of similarities. With this in mind, we present recommendations for running international student collaborations.

Collaborative Technology (CT) plays an important role in overcoming the challenges of globally distributed projects. It enables collaboration, but the specific choice of technology also imposes constraints on how projects are conducted. Over the past decade, we have engaged in an action research programme to develop an Open-Ended Group Project situated in an educational framework in which international collaboration, including interaction with a real world client, is an essential component. This paper investigates the manner in which students reflected on their patterns of CT use within the collaborative setting. In general, these reflections were found to be superficial and descriptive, exhibiting a reductive view of CT as a set of technological features, which acted as a neutral medium for communication and participation. One consequence of this was a lack of awareness of the ways in which the technology influenced the behaviour of individual students or the collaborative nature of the group. We explore some potential causes for this and reflect on some difficulties faced by the students. These have important pedagogical implications for courses in which the learning objectives include the development of suitable competencies for working in a global collaborative environment.

This paper reports on a study conducted at a Swedish university in which engineering students reflect on their attainment of professional competencies using generic graduate attributes as a guiding framework. In this study, the nine graduate attributes from Curtin University in Perth, Australia were used as this framework. The Swedish students were asked to reflect on their understanding of the competencies, and to select three on which to focus over the course of the semester. Students predominantly selected professional skills, thinking skills, information skills, communication skills, and intercultural understanding. In a subsequent reflection, students were asked to self-assess improvement of their chosen attributes. Results showed that while the teaching staff judged that the students had further developed the competencies, students lacked a framework to see this for themselves and reported difficulty in reflecting on progress in professional competency attainment. This suggests that a more holistic approach should be taken earlier in the degree to focus student attention on professional competencies, and provide ongoing experience reflecting on progressive achievement.

Many of us run capstone project courses and do so in different ways. The members of this panel come from different countries, belong to different types of institutions, teach in different computing disciplines and the capstone projects they run also vary considerably. Yet, there is a strong sense of consensus about what a capstone project is and how valuable it is as a learning experience for students.The panel discussion will serve as an inspiration to develop new, and change old capstone project courses. The main aim is to discuss why, or why not, different approaches work in a capstone project. What are the learning objectives behind the approach? What are the problems? What are the benefits? How is assessment managed? What resources, tools and techniques are used to administer and manage the projects?Concrete examples of how capstone projects are run at the six institutions represented by the panellists will be given, and issues such as framework, methodologies, project examples and technologies used in the process of producing projects will be addressed.

Changing conditions for teaching increase our motivation to understand the teaching and learning process. First time investigators of educational settings often feel uncertain about what aspects are involved and how to design a meaningful investigation. This paper develops and describes an applied research model with the objective of providing computer science (CS) academics of with a structured overview of the inter-disciplinary research components of CS education research.The paper argues that adopting such a model has the potential to enhance the maturity, significance and applicability of CS education research studies by placing them in a more complete research context. This helps to make the outcomes more readily transportable to other teaching and learning situations.One aim of publicizing the model is to help inspire the growing numbers of people who are becoming interested in CS education research. In addition we hope to simplify the task of gaining a rapid understanding of the research design issues and options that are typically involved.

This paper brings together three different sets of experiences of using large scale open ended group projects as a means of enhancing the skills of undergraduate students and preparing them for a career in Software Engineering. The paper commences by examining the circumstances in which open ended group projects have proved to be successful, briefly indicating the criteria that have been used to measure that success. It then examines some of the choices that must be made in designing and managing such projects, drawing on the different experiences of the three authors. It is argued throughout that open ended group projects are an effective way of developing and enhancing skills and of reinforcing learning in most knowledge areas. It is further suggested that open ended group projects offer a way of preparing students for their subsequent careers which is valued by industry and commerce and which also motivates and enthuses students.

Just a few years ago, incorporating team projects in a course meant that all students had to be collocated, able to meet face-to-face. Now, distributed teams use the Internet and other technologies to work across time and distance. Instructors who include distributed team projects in their courses add the dimensions of collaborative technologies, language, and culture to the technical problem-solving and team-building aspects. Continuous improvement in course structure and content are necessary to meet the changing needs of students as well as the changes in technology. This paper traces the evolution of a distributed project course offered since 1998. Each time the course has been run, students, faculty, and researchers have learned important lessons, which have been used to improve successive course offerings.

This paper reports selected results from the most recent of a series of international collaborative trials between students at Auckland University of Technology and Uppsala University. The trials require students to work together in virtual groups, comprising students from each institution, to perform a common task. The topic of this paper is how to form and sustain more effective virtual groups. In this trial a cyber-icebreaker task has been introduced and its contribution to group effectiveness is explored. Some conclusions are drawn pinpointing the strengths and weaknesses of this trial design, and some insights into effective design of electronic collaborative learning groups are gained.

No abstract available.

Students of today need to be prepared to work in globally distributed organizations. Part of that preparation involves teaching students to work effectively in teams to solve problems. Students also must be able to work with individuals located at distant sites where there is no or very little face-to-face interaction. The Runestone project, an international collaboration between two universities, adds new dimensions to student teamwork, requiring students to handle collaboration that is remote, cross-cultural, and technically challenging. Runestone is a three-year project funded by the Swedish Council for the Renewal of Undergraduate Education. A pilot study in 1998 was followed by a full-scale implementation in 1999 with another implementation ongoing in 2000.Each time this global cooperation project is run, both students and faculty learn important lessons in how to work with each other in a virtual environment. This paper discusses both student and faculty learning outcomes for Runestone 1999.

We now and then make changes to our courses and how we teach or examine them. This is often done in isolation from other courses that the students take. In this paper we report on experiences made in a coordinated study concerning examination methods. The target group was 60 students from the Systems branch of the Engineering Physics study program. We changed all three courses they took during the first ten weeks of the spring semester 1996. The changes were in short: replace the final exam by weekly assignments, introduce seminars as a method of examination, and in the cases where a written exam was kept, the main focus of the questions were changed to showing understanding, ability to analyze and synthesize.Our experiences in this study clearly show that changing examination is a tool for changing the way our students work, and thus for improving the quality of the education.

In this paper we compare and contrast computer science curricula in four universities in four different countries (and continents): Australia;Israel; South Africa and Sweden.