This innovative practice full paper addresses the hypothesis that vocational workforce competence supply can be improved if a structured, strategic and long-term dialogue between local industry and local VET (Vocational Education and Training) governing bodies is established. Demand for vocational workforce is increasing, and by 2040 the demand is expected to exceed availability of resources in most vocational sectors. According to the National Agency for Education Sweden needs to increase the scale of industrial vocational education, both in upper secondary level and in adult education. By 2035, lost productivity due to shortfall in the educated technical workforce is estimated to cost Swedish companies 990 billion Swedish Kronor. An action research framework is used to bring together local decision-makers in a dialogue forum called in Swedish “Strate-gisk Verkstad och Aktion for Kompetensforsorjnlng” (SVAK). The goal is to improve VET systems through a new form of long-term dialogue in which representatives of the various system sectors meet to discuss challenges, practical solutions, as well as make joint decisions and implement initiatives.

This special session proposal provides participants with hands-on experience in finding and making explicit the dispositional aspects of active learning. Many faculty develop interactive, active learning experiences to better support student learning; an oft-cited rational includes the notion that students will be ‘better prepared’ or more ready to go into industry. Course learning goals framed on the Revised Bloom's Taxonomy or other cognitive learning frameworks often fall short of capturing the breadth of learning and the full learning goals intended. This difference is an example of what is often termed a ‘hidden curriculum.’ Participants should bring to the session a syllabus for a course they teach which includes some aspect of competency development. We especially welcome participants who currently use project-based or other active-learning approaches in their courses.

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.

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 addresses the definition and implementation of Computational Thinking (CT) in K-12 education. CT is the focus of ongoing debate about the future of computing in schools, and this poses a number of challenges. Early discussions on the topic were plagued by vague and all-encompassing definitions of the term, which raised awareness of a need for school learning focused on emerging computational systems and their impact on society and the lives of citizens, but failed to address what should actually be included in the revised curricula. As some of those issues have been addressed, a number of problems remain. This paper analyses some recent and future developments in the field of computing, and expands the discussion on the vexed question of the nature and limits of computational thinking. We ask whether the current mainstream literature and curriculum for CT is well positioned in terms of the future towards which computing is heading. We conclude by summarising the implications these questions have for the future development of K-12 curricula and teaching practices.

This Work in Progress paper describes considerations relative to the development of a follow-up exploratory quantitative design for examining student motivation in higher engineering education. The intent of the current work is to build on the outcomes of a previous qualitative study exploring the perceptions of students with regard to work industry-related activities included as part of their formal study experience in Swedish university settings. In the follow-up study design discussed in this paper we focus on a quantitative approach to assessing the impact of such experiences on student motivation. Findings from our previous study indicate both that how these different work industry-related activities are conducted and how the different relationships that are present can effect students' motivation for learning in tertiary engineering education. However, while the earlier study provides understanding of which scenarios can affect student motivation, there is a need to consider relative effect sizes. To address this issue in this paper, we present considerations for a survey design and discuss the determination of population and sample size and study variables for a preliminary survey instrument. We also propose methods with which to establish validity and reliability, as well as presenting a data analysis plan. At this juncture, the development of a follow-up exploratory quantitative study will contribute to a better understanding of students' perceptions about work industry-related activities which is currently a prime concern in higher engineering education, providing guidelines for a more critical planning of these activities in the future.

In this Research Full Paper we contribute to the research on constructions of technology education. Why are women and minority groups often under-represented in student cohorts in STEM programmes? Many studies have addressed this question, and much is known about the impact of representations of technology studies on the choices and motivations of these demographic groups in many countries. Many of the recent studies published in the English language address the North American education system. This paper investigates if perpetuation of gender norms might be evident in recruitment materials for Swedish upper secondary education. This research question is addressed through an analysis of how upper secondary education schools use images in presenting their university preparatory programs to prospective students. Swedish post-compulsory school education comprises a number of specialised upper secondary school programmes in Technology, Natural science, Social science and Economy. A significant display area of the web content regarding these programmes is pictorial information. In this study Technology Education is viewed as a societal construction and images representing the technology program are here used as a way of discovering both perceptions about them, and underlying themes that the choice of images might communicate. Three themes, Environment, Pedagogical approach and Human presence, emerge and serve as a foundation from which similarities and differences in the visual messages associated with these programs are investigated. Our major finding is that images used in association with Technology Education portray a paucity of social relations and a dominant culture of working/studying alone. These findings are of concern, as this type of profile has been shown to reduce motivation of women and minority groups to pursue such a career.

This Working Group aims to take the current approved Computer Science curricula document, CS2013, and redevelop it into competency statements. The CC2020 project has designed and built a prototype of a visualization tool to compare and contrast current computing curricula. Three basic approaches were taken to portray the base data that will be used for the tool: the first being expert-defined competencies, the second based on mining, and the third based on expert-defined knowledge areas. The visualization tool takes competency statements from each of the current approved computing curricula and visually represents them. Using competency to frame curricula and describe educational outcomes in computing is not new. Since the CC2005 report was published several additional curricula have appeared and the information technology, information systems, and software engineering communities have developed three approaches to defining computing competency in the context of developing their curricula reports. In future the CC2020 report advocates that all new curricula will be written as competency statements. Currently the CS2013 curricula is expressed in learning outcomes rather than the competency statements, so it is essential to be able to demonstrate Computer Science curricula in these new terms to accommodate the new direction and demonstrate Computer Science in the new visualization tool.

This work-in-progress paper presents a study on how K-12 Computer Science teachers in Saudi Arabia have changed their pedagogy as a result of engaging in one year of professional development leading up to applying for a teacher's award. The results are based on thematic analysis of fourteen interviews with teachers that have been awarded either the `Education Excellence Award' or the `Microsoft Expert in Education'. The study focuses on how preparing for and getting the teaching award has influenced them focusing on changes in their pedagogical development and subsequent practices. The work provides an in-depth description of several aspects of the Saudi Arabian teaching culture. It explores and discusses the affordances of mechanisms used to strengthen pedagogical competence in a teacher community, paying extra attention to awards. This study identifies four main factors that motivate teachers to engage in pedagogical development in teaching Computer Science. The research suggests that awards can be an efficient motivator in establishing a culture of excellence among Computer Science teachers.

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.

This full research paper aims to investigate the nature of industry-related activities engineering students encounter at a Swedish university, as well as the impact these activities have on their motivation to study engineering. Over the last decade, many studies have been conducted concerning university-industry engagement which chart the landscape of activities, educational approaches, and challenges that students face when involved in industry-related activities. Despite the existing close collaboration between Swedish engineering universities and industry, it seems that not only the feedback from the industry to universities is missing, but also students' perceptions of their industry experience and their needs are not taken adequately into consideration by the other two actors. As a consequence, there is a gap among the above three actors preventing the advancement of engineering education in terms of industrial interventions. Furthermore, there is a lack of research about students' perceptions of university-industry engagement activities. This study adopts a qualitative and exploratory research perspective, intending to gain a deep understanding of students' perceptions of industry-related activities which were integrated into their education. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with nine master's students studying on five-year long engineering programmes in a large research-intensive Swedish university. An inductive thematic analysis was employed, and social cognitive theory was considered as an interpretive tool through which to explore student motivation. The interviews indicated that the students participated actively in various industry-related activities, such as guest lectures, field-trips, internships, summer schools, and masters' theses in collaboration with industry partners which give context to the findings which highlight how industry-related activities can either positively or negatively affect students' motivation for studying and learning in engineering education.

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).

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.

This paper provides an overview of a worldwide project to chart the future of computing education on a global scale. The Computing Curricular 2020 (CC2020) initiative engages a task force of thirty-six professionals from sixteen countries and six continents in the task of producing resources that map the computing and educational advances that have occurred since the publication of its predecessor, CC2005. The results of the initiative will be futuristic in the sense that it will be a durable portfolio of resources useful to educational institutions, governments, industry, students, and the public on a global scale. This paper summarizes the status and approaches developed by the CC2020 taskforce, a digest of the content anticipated in the resources delivered as well as suggestions for their use.

This paper explores the attitudes of Computer Science (CS) teachers in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia (KSA) who are confronted by the Saudi Teaching Competencies Standards (STCS). The STCS is a response to a substantial need to develop both subject-specific pedagogical ability as well as teachers subject area knowledge. The Ministry of Education in the KSA is encouraging teachers to improve their practices to achieve the new quality requirements for education. This paper presents the results of an investigation of CS teachers' views on educational belief changes in the KSA schools. The paper addresses how and why CS teachers adopt new educational beliefs in their teaching. The paper presents the results of the investigation of the CS teachers views on educational belief changes in the KSA schools and the STCS policy document guidelines. Research in the area of changing educational epistemology in teaching CS identifies six factors that influence teachers, these are personal pedagogical beliefs, peer learning, curriculum, self-directed learning, student feedback and the STCS. A mixed method study approach was adopted in this work. Content analysis has been applied to the interview transcript and thematic coding analysis to the government policy document (STCS). The results provide a valuable case study in the KSA and emphasize the weak relationship between educational epistemology change and the STCS norms. The findings show that the STCS should provide stronger guidance for CS teachers to keep changing beliefs in teaching CS. The STCS should offer supporting official resources to CS teachers to help them in changing their beliefs in regard to teaching CS.

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.

This full research paper approaches the teaching of STEM from a new multi-disciplinary perspective. While the importance of the STEM agenda is not in dispute, the plurality in treatment of STEM as individual subjects or disciplinary areas of study potentially limits the evolution of a new conception of STEM education. In this paper, determinist disciplined learning is challenged through the advocacy of a learning science agenda, which we argue from the perspective of modern teacher education.Unintentionally, our educational systems and structures can create a silo-effect, sometimes impeding the development of multi and trans-disciplinary competencies. This paper advances an argument for a conception of teacher education that supports the development of the holistic STEM teacher. Our conception of the holistic STEM educator revolves around central themes focused on building, manipulating and synthesising STEM specific attitudes, skills and knowledge. The proximal and distal effects are also considered in subsequent discussion.This paper does not propose a generalist teacher, as the significance of content knowledge as a critical component of teacher efficacy is not contested. On the contrary, it considers an unbounded and applied perspective to the treatment of STEM with implications for an enhanced comprehension of abstracted knowledge and support for a more robust construction of meaning. The vision of a STEM teacher is articulated with respect to position, treatment and competencies intending to qualify and sustain the STEM agenda through pragmatic action.

Computing related content is introduced in school curricula all over the world, placing new requirements on school teachers and their knowledge. Little attention has been paid to fostering the skills and attitudes required to teach the new content. This involves not only traditional computing topics, such as algorithms or programming, but also the role of technology in society as well as questions related to ethics, safety and integrity. As technology develops at a fast rate, so does the content to be taught. Learning computing content through isolated in-service training initiatives is by no means enough, but rather, teachers need to develop confidence to independently and continuously explore what is new, what is relevant and how to include digital competence in their teaching. Teachers' self-efficacy is hence of crucial importance. In a previous article \citenorden2017 we described the development of a self-efficacy scale for teachers, focusing on digital competence as described in EU's framework DigComp 2.0. In this paper, we extend that work by analysing 530 teachers' responses collected in Autumn 2017 during a series of workshops and other professional development events. Our goal was to collect baseline data, painting a picture of teachers' current self-efficacy levels in order to facilitate follow-up studies. In addition, our results also point out challenging areas, consequently providing important insight into what topics and themes should be emphasized in professional development initiatives.

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.

As computer science enters the school curricula in an increasing number of countries, teachers must prepare to integrate digital competences into their teaching. This integration is a moving target where new methods, tools and applications appear and disappear at such rates that teachers must have confidence to independently and continuously explore what is new, what is relevant and how to plan their pedagogic activities to include digital competences. In this context approaches which can be used to study self-efficacy in digital competences among school teachers are desperately needed. With such a tool in place, we can make a baseline study and then follow teachers over time to measure changes in their self-efficacy, the cause of these changes and learn how to build their digital competence self-efficacy in different ways. The same tool can also be used to measure the self-efficacy in other populations, e.g., students in teacher training programs to ensure that they obtain an adequate self-efficacy in digital competences during their studies. This paper describes the development of a self-efficacy scale in digital competences, based on the DigiComp 2.0 framework definition of digital competence. The tool focuses predominantly on digital competences relevant for teachers in school years K-9.

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.

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.

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.

The role of anonymous assessment in ensuring fair and equitable outcomes for students has been one of the major tenets of educational reform over the last few decades [1]. One of the major goals of these efforts is to reduce the impact of subconscious discriminatory behaviour in assigning grades based on perceptions of ability of gender or minority groups by the examiner. Recently however research has been emerging which challenges the widespread assumptions about the benefits of anonymity drawn from Newstead's work. Contrary results include the work of Dorsey and Colliver, 1995, in medical education, and Batten et al. 2013, who explore the impact of student reputation on assessment. These and many other studies conclude that anonymous assessment resulted in no apparent changes in assessment outcomes. In this paper we explore the implications of anonymity taking examples from educational settings where student anonymity is already an adopted practice. We discuss the positive and negative implications of student anonymity, and identify areas for future research.

This year marks the 19th ITiCSE conference. This panel will provide conference delegates, both frequent attendees and those new to ITiCSE the opportunity to reflect on the conference's success as one of the premier international com- puter science education conferences and to discuss potential future directions for the conference.

Oral and written communication proficiency is an important professional skill for engineering graduates. However, developing these skills is often poorly integrated into the engineering curriculum. We present a three year integrated approach to developing professional competence in oral and written communication, which has been implemented in the IT engineering program at a Swedish research university. In the paper we describe the educational approach, the nature of assessment items and measures taken to ensure progressive skills development in order to ensure that graduates emerge with fully fledged communications skills. The goal of the paper is to describe a successful model for professional skills development, and to encourage a continuing dialogue on how to best equip students with communication skills for professional practice.

Research questions in STEM disciplines are frequently strongly contextualised in the teaching and learning practice of the researcher. In this paper we chart a number of possible paths a researcher can follow from a single research proposition, or fundamental research question, to results which can vary significantly in nature. In order to do this, we establish a theoretical framework for research activity and examine the meaning of “theory” as a cognitive and research tool that helps engineering education practitioners and researchers. The paper reflects on the nature and role of different types of theory at four distinct stages of engineering education research: disciplinary, methodological, analytical, and interpretive. We illustrate how theory applies to the framing and integration of study results, and assists in the process of relating theories of learner development and learning to results of empirical data analysis.

Low enrollment and high drop-out rates in computer science (CS) have led to an alarming decrease in number of graduates in western countries. What are students' learning experiences, how do these affect their attitudes towards learning CS? This question was explored by investigating diverse students, of a broad study program with courses in humanities and technology, at the end of an introductory course in CS (CS1), which has been designed to enhance students' engagement. The results of a first questionnaire were remarkably positive: All students reflected their experiences as overall positive. Almost half of the students stated, that they had been skeptical towards learning CS before the course. All of these students described positive transformations of attitudes. These results provided an interesting starting point for further research using interviews: What exactly have these students experienced and how do they reason about future engagement? We point out students' experiences that were crucial for a positive transformation of attitudes as well as critical aspects in students' reasoning on future engagement in CS.

Conceptual weaknesses have been identified in previous research that contribute to student learning difficulties related to computer programming. We postulate that improved learning can be achieved by using a tool that combines approaches from active learning and visualisation. We describe the architecture and features of a tool that supports mobile phone input to an interactive code execution framework which interfaces with Jeliot 3. Mobile users are able to contribute code snippets, and make predictions about execution behaviour of code executing in the tool. Individual feedback is provided to mobile devices in real time, allowing us to provide customised feedback to individual learners during a period of instruction.

What is Computing Education Research (CER), why are we doing this type of research, and what should the community achieve? As associate editors to this special edition we provide our perspectives and discuss how they have influenced the evolution of the Koli Calling International Conference on Computing Education Research over the last nine years. The two articles in the special issue have been selected from among the twenty eight conference contributions for their originality and contribution to CER in the areas the Koli Calling Conference aims to emphasize. We hope that you find them inspiring reading.

Adoption of the Bologna Accord in the European Higher Ed-ucation Area (EHEA) represents a concerted move towards harmonisation of educational outcomes in higher education at the Bachelor, Masters and PhD levels. At a time when European systems are undergoing signif-icant examination and modification, this project addresses the need for greater understanding of the nature of Mas-ters level education in the Informatics disciplines across Eu-rope and the United States. The poster presents the cur-rent findings of the project, and is intended to prompt dis-cussion about the content and expected outcomes of such programmes world-wide.

Teams representing the USA and Europe engage in a battle of words and wits to establish "once and for all" which educational system produces the superior outcome. This "no holds barred" debate leaves no stone unturned in a search for truth on this question, providing a final answer to a controversy that has plagued our community since the inception of computing itself. Witness this historic moment in the history of CS education first hand!

Opportunistic networking is a new communication paradigm which explores the potential of inter-device contacts due to human mobility [3, 5]. Intermittent connectivity, non existence of an end-to-end path between nodes and extreme dynamism in topological structure are inherent characteristics of opportunistic networking [2, 5]. In opportunistic networking devices make control and management decisions by themselves with locally available information. The unique differences that draw the line between opportunistic networking and other legacy networking environments call for newer approaches for systems development.

In this panel presentation, the five members will discuss their experiences of working with students in virtual teams. They will share some of the issues and problems they have had and also highlight some of the opportunities and challenges for students working collaboratively together.The virtual student team is defined as a group of students who have come together to perform a certain task and who communicate electronically to achieve that task. Student groups are transformed into teams with structure, purpose and the potential to achieve effective project work. The teams are temporary in that they may exist for a semester or for the life of a particular assessment task or project. Virtual student teams are usually geographically dispersed and thus often have members who are culturally different. There is a heavy reliance on the use of ICT for communication and collaboration within the team.The members of the panel have all had some research experience with teams and teamwork. They have all had different experiences with setting up and managing virtual student teams.

No abstract available.

The different ways in which some computer network concepts are understood by students who take an internationally distributed project-based course have been identified in an empirical, qualitative, phenomena graphic research project. The students, who work in teams of six, three in each of the participating countries, collaborate over the Internet to produce a software system which controls a modified version of a toy. Their learning of a computer networking protocols as well as the possibilities to generalize and to deploy the results in teaching situations are presented. The results are useful when seen in the light of the students' learning environment, since relations between the learning outcome and the learning environment can be discerned.

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.

No abstract available.

No abstract available.