Skills-based evaluation is an alternative evaluation model that is a variation of both mastery and specifications grading. Students are evaluated on the set of skills they have demonstrably acquired over the duration of a course and the level at which they are able to demonstrate those skills. This is in opposition to traditional models which evaluate performance at fixed time points. A growing body of research suggests that such alternative evaluation models are more equitable, motivating, and efficacious for students. However, adoption remains limited in part due to concerns about student acceptance, perceived lack of rigour, and the potential increase in workload due to repeated assessments.

There is a wealth of evidence that involving undergraduate students in research has positive impacts in a variety of areas, from representation and retention to outcomes and self-efficacy. However, developing and growing an undergraduate research program can be daunting, especially for institutions that do not have a large existing research enterprise. In this work, we detail a program that revolves around student-developed literature maps to help students gain the ability to read and assess research papers in a way that is accessible, robust, and requires relatively little faculty overhead. We further detail how this program has been run through 4 iterations, with a total of 47 students producing 5 posters or short papers, and 3 full papers. In this work, we provide our experiences using literature mapping projects to boot-strap an undergraduate research program and provide quantitative and qualitative analysis of the students who have participated. All of the materials, including sample spreadsheets, and scripts to generate LaTeX tables and figures are included for anyone wishing to undertake a literature mapping project of their own.

There is a growing movement in the education community to re-evaluate grading practices and find ways of evaluating students that are more flexible, equitable, and focused on student growth. A wide variety of alternative evaluation systems have been developed, including mastery grading, specifications grading, contract grading and ungrading.

With the recent growth in popularity of alternative evaluation methods, two methodologies have become particularly prevalent in CS education literature: Specifications grading and contract grading. Recent work has shown that these novel evaluation approaches can have positive impacts in the classroom and lead to more equitable outcomes for students. However, there is not yet a consensus on terminology, implementation details and best practices. In this work, we review the literature on the use of specifications and contract grading in CS education. We find that while there is a good deal of promising research, there is a great deal of variation in methodologies and a sparsity of evaluation of the efficacy of learning outcomes.

In computing courses, instructor involvement and social comfort are vital for resilience and belonging. We examine engagement with instructor emails aimed at strengthening the connection with students. We sent weekly emails from instructors to first- and upper-year computing students. These emails included reminders for the assignments due each week. Half of the students received reminders embedded in an informal message that contained approachable wording and relevant current course events, while the rest received a list of precise deadlines. This text had no emotional engagement from the instructor. We collected and analyzed email access and link click rates, along with student survey responses about email preferences and engagement. We found that first-year students had lower email access and link click rates than upper-year students. While we did not find differences in first-year engagement based on the type of email, upper-year students appeared to be more engaged when receiving the intentionally informal version of the email. Understanding the message preferences of computing students can enhance instructor messaging and improve engagement. Strategies should be explored to boost first-year student engagement, while the higher engagement among upper-year students underscores the importance of instructor support in advanced courses.