Usability is a crucial aspect of software development, yet it is not emphasized enough in computing education. Studies show that poor usability leads to significant financial losses, with businesses in the United States alone incurring 62 billion in annual losses due to subpar user experiences. Despite its importance, usability principles are not sufficiently taught to computing students. This experience report presents HeuristicBuilder, an interactive multimodal educational tool designed to teach Jakob Nielsen's 10 usability heuristics. These principles are essential for designing user-friendly interactive systems, but often pose challenges in practical application. HeuristicBuilder addresses this by combining theoretical learning via reading and quizzes with practical UI design exercises. The tool was evaluated with 224 participants, showing significant improvements in both theoretical understanding and practical application of usability principles. Participants found HeuristicBuilder to be valuable and effective, preferring its interactive approach over traditional methods such as reading books or online courses. In conclusion, HeuristicBuilder proves effective at educating users about usability heuristics through engaging, accessible means. Its positive reception highlights its potential to enhance usability education and user experience design practices. Future enhancements aim to further optimize interactive learning and practical application, advancing skills among interaction designers and usability practitioners.

This experience report presents the development and evaluation of a virtual reality (VR)-based, gamified platform designed to teach accessibility concepts in an engaging and immersive manner. The system integrates interactive scenarios and game elements to enhance student motivation and support knowledge retention. To assess its effectiveness, we conducted a study with 35 students who used the VR platform and provided feedback through a post-intervention survey. The findings indicate positive perceptions of the learning experience, with participants reporting increased awareness and understanding of accessibility principles. Drawing on the design and evaluation process, this report highlights the value of an embodied learning approach that integrates VR and gamification to enhance the impact of accessibility education. It offers practical insights into the design, implementation, and pedagogical potential of VR-based, gamified tools for enhancing accessibility in computer learning education.

As artificial intelligence (AI) technologies become more deeply integrated into everyday life, the ethical challenges they pose—from algorithmic bias and privacy breaches to questions of accountability and societal impact—have gained attention. While there is existing research on how general or tech ethics is taught within computer science (CS) education, comparatively little is known about the specific treatment of AI ethics within CS education. This study addresses that gap through a large-scale analysis of 955 AI-related publicly available course syllabi from top U.S. universities, focusing on the presence and depth of instruction on AI ethics. Of these, only 83 courses incorporated AI ethics content. We analyzed these syllabi to assess the extent of coverage, instructional approaches, topics addressed, learning objectives, and assessment methods used in teaching AI ethics. Our findings indicate that AI ethics is most often integrated into broader AI-related technical courses rather than taught as a dedicated subject, with most courses allotting only one or two sessions for these topics. Commonly addressed themes include algorithmic bias, data privacy, transparency, and social impact. This work highlights both the progress and the gaps in preparing future technologists to engage with the ethical dimensions of AI, and it offers a framework for enhancing the integration of AI ethics in computing curricula.

While numerous studies have explored the integration of accessibility into computing courses, including software engineering courses, most focus on awareness-building or post-development WCAG compliance testing, often overlooking the shift-left principle, which advocates for embedding accessibility considerations early in the software development lifecycle, particularly during the design and planning stages. To address this gap, we redesigned a software engineering course to incorporate accessibility from the outset, beginning with requirements elicitation and UX design. Students received targeted training in using accessibility evaluation tools such as Stark and Axe for Figma during the design phase, followed by continued testing in the post-development (testing) phase using tools like AChecker and WAVE. We analyzed student projects to understand common accessibility issues detected and fixed across phases, and compared issue types across tools. Our findings affirm the value of a multi-tool, multi-phase approach: early design checks enable the identification and remediation of low-effort, high-impact issues, thereby reducing rework and freeing bandwidth for more complex development-level fixes. This work provides practical insights for computing educators aiming to meaningfully integrate accessibility into core software engineering curricula and contributes to a broader cultural shift toward building accessible technologies by design.

Digital accessibility ensures that digital products and services are usable by a diverse range of users, regardless of their physical or cognitive abilities. While numerous standards and guidelines have been established to aid developers in creating accessible content, studies reveal a persistent lack of accessibility in many web and mobile applications. This gap is often attributed to barriers such as lack of awareness, insufficient knowledge, absence of specific requirements, time constraints, and lack of executive support. In this context, we aim to address the lack of awareness and knowledge challenges by proposing a hands-on approach that leverages the capabilities of Large Language Models (LLMs) like ChatGPT to enhance students' accessibility awareness, knowledge, and practical skills. We engaged software engineering students in tasks involving website development and accessibility evaluation using checker tools, and we utilized ChatGPT 3.5 to fix identified accessibility issues. Our findings suggest that practical assignments significantly enhance learning outcomes, as interactions with LLMs allow students to develop a deeper understanding of accessibility concepts. This approach not only reinforces theoretical knowledge but also highlights the real-world impact of their work. The results indicate that combining practical assignments with AI-driven support effectively improves students' proficiency in web accessibility.

This experience report contributes to the expanding body of literature advocating for the inclusion of accessibility topics within core computing courses rather than restricting them to specialized electives such as human-computer interaction (HCI). We integrated an accessibility-focused sprint into a 3-credit software engineering course at a large private university in the US. Throughout the course, students progressively developed a software project in groups with a dedicated sprint designed to emphasize the importance of accessibility. This sprint included lectures on accessibility principles and hands-on accessibility testing on their own projects, followed by a sprint to fix the issues found. A survey was conducted at the end of the course to gauge their learning outcomes and perceptions of accessibility. The results demonstrate that integrating accessibility into a software engineering course not only enhances students' technical skills but also boosts their commitment to creating inclusive software. We present the accessibility interventions made, assessment instruments used and our findings in this report. We also offer key insights as takeaways for the computing education community, providing guidance for educators aiming to embed accessibility into their curriculum.

With over 95% of the top one million websites not being fully accessible, teaching digital accessibility to computing students is crucial. In this study, conducted over three spring semesters within a Software Engineering project course, we introduced dedicated sprints focused on accessibility. During these sprints, students were taught about various types of disabilities, accessibility principles, web content accessibility guidelines (WCAG), and various automated and manual techniques to test for accessibility. Students utilized automated tools to identify accessibility issues in their web projects and subsequently dedicated another sprint to address and resolve these issues. We systematically documented common accessibility mistakes students make, highlighting the WCAG 'success criteria' that require careful instructional focus. Additionally, we identify which accessibility issues are frequently and easily resolved by students and which challenges persist despite their efforts. This comprehensive analysis provides valuable insights, enabling the computing education community to effectively integrate and emphasize accessibility instruction in their curricula, ultimately fostering more inclusive and accessible web development practices.

In recent years, there has been rising interest from both governments and private industry in developing software that is accessible to all, including people with disabilities. However, the computer science (CS) courses that ought to prepare future professionals to develop such accessible software hardly cover topics related to accessibility. While there is growing literature on incorporating accessibility topics in computing education in the West, there is little work on this in the Global South, particularly in India, which has a large number of computing students and software professionals. In this replication report, we present (A) our findings from a replication of surveys used in the US and Switzerland on who teaches accessibility and barriers to teaching accessibility and (B) a qualitative analysis of perceptions of CS faculty in India about digital accessibility and teaching accessibility. Our study corroborates the findings of the earlier surveys: very few CS faculty teach accessibility, and the top barriers they perceive are the same. The qualitative analysis further reveals that the faculty in India need training on accessibility concepts and disabilities sensitization, and exposure to existing and ongoing CS education research and pedagogies. In light of these findings, we present recommendations aimed at addressing these challenges and enhancing the integration of accessibility into computing education.

Educating students about academic integrity expectations has been suggested as one of the ways to reduce malpractice in take-home programming assignments. We test this hypothesis using data collected from an artificial intelligence course with 105 participants (N=105) at a university in India. The AI course had two programming assignments. Plagiarism through collusion was quantified using the Measure of Software Similarity (MOSS) tool. Students were educated about what constitutes academic dishonesty and were required to take an honor pledge before the start of the second take-home programming assignment. The two programming assignments were novel and did not have solutions available on the internet. We expected the mean percentage of similar lines of code to be significantly less in the second programming assignment. However, our results show no significant difference in the mean percentage of similar lines of code across the two programming assignments. We also study how the Big-five personality traits affect the propensity for plagiarism in the two take-home assignments. Our results across both assignments show that the extraversion trait of the Big Five personality exhibits a positive association, and the conscientiousness trait exhibits a negative association with plagiarism tendencies. Our result suggests that the policy of educating students about academic integrity will have a limited impact as long as students perceive an opportunity for plagiarism to be present. We explain our results using the Fraud triangle model.

Contemporary computer science graduates enter a world where numerous profound ethical dilemmas confronting society revolve around computing. Navigating the complexities of today’s technological landscape requires a profound consideration of ethical questions. Deliberations on the kinds of data to be gathered or avoided, the ethical dimensions of algorithmic decision-making, and the role of digital platforms in safeguarding democratic principles are at the forefront of discussions. Additionally, addressing biases in large language models (LLMs), ensuring responsible AI practices, and evaluating the technology industry’s contributions to climate change are pivotal aspects.

The growing interest in accessible software reflects in computing educators' and education researchers' efforts to include accessibility in core computing education. We integrated accessibility in a junior/senior-level Android app development course at a large private university in India. The course introduced three accessibility-related topics using various interventions: Accessibility Awareness (a guest lecture by a legal expert), Technical Knowledge (lectures on Android accessibility guidelines and testing practices and graded components for implementing accessibility in programming assignments), and Empathy (an activity that required students to blindfold themselves and interact with their phones using a screen-reader). We evaluated their impact on student learning using three instruments: (A) A pre/post-course questionnaire, (B) Reflective questions on each of the four programming assignments, and (C) Midterm and Final exam questions. Our findings demonstrate that: (A) significantly more (p <.05) students considered disabilities when designing an app after taking this course, (B) many students developed empathy towards the challenges persons with disabilities face while using inaccessible apps, and (C) all students could correctly identify at least one accessibility issue in the user interface of a real-world app given its screenshot and 90% of them could provide a correct solution to fix it.

Despite a growing emphasis on accessible software, these topics find little mention in computing curricula. Less than 5 percent of our students mentioned disabilities when asked to list concerns in designing an app, although other inclusivity considerations were relatively common. We present the preliminary findings of our questionnaire and details of our interventions to teach accessibility in an Android-focussed Software Engineering course in this poster.