The call for alternative grading practices has been made both inside and outside the computing education community. Various practices exist to provide assessment and feedback to students that do not rely strictly on points out of one hundred percent, weighted averages, high stakes assignments, and grading for behaviors instead of learning. However, modern classrooms, especially computer science classrooms, rely on a myriad of digital tools to organize and maintain the course structure. Tools like learning management systems, automatic grading systems, submission systems, and practice systems all exist for computing students and faculty to use to help support the learning of programming concepts. By and large, these systems all rely on an underlying mechanism of points and aggregating points for scoring. In the face of such technological choices, adopting alternative grading practices can prove challenging for instructors and confusing for students. In this position paper, we advocate addressing key research problems to make these systems easier to use with alternative grading practices. These include comprehensive support for categorical grading, comprehensive support for rework and resubmission, and improved protocols for communication of scores and feedback. We propose an extension to LTI to support the needs of alternative grading practices, and we provide an initial design for this LTI extension. We discuss current problems and potential solutions and challenge the community to work on these problems and consider the design of future systems to embrace grading approaches that go beyond just points-based scoring.

Alternative grading practices seek to improve learning and make education more equitable. For the past few years, our community has been exploring these techniques and contextualizing them for use in computing courses. In this panel, we will present various grading techniques with a particular attention to the experience implementing them and pitfalls to be avoided. The presenters all have extensive experience exploring alternative grading techniques. Furthermore, we hope to engage the audience in a conversation about the nuance of implementing these particular techniques in the variety of courses that are typical in computing programs.

The field of computer science has a problem of representation–many groups are not represented in our classroom at levels approaching their composition in society. Unfortunately, the representation issue is a larger societal issue and begins well before students enter our institutions. Though we acknowledge that building inclusive and learner-centered classroom environments cannot increase representation by itself, it can have an impact on retention and inclusion for members of marginalized communities.

As proposed by Linda B. Nilson and Joseph A. Packowski in Specifications Grading 2.0: Restoring Rigor, Motivating Students, Saving Faculty Time, and Developing Career Competencies, Specifications Grading is an assessment paradigm that relies on complete/incomplete grading of assignments and assessments, the structuring of course content into modules linked to learning outcomes, and the bundling of assignments and assessments within those modules. One intention of this type of course grading construct is to align assessment more closely with student attainment of intended learning outcomes. Many of the features of Specifications Grading make it more equitable. While there has been very visible work in incorporating Specifications Grading in some academic areas (e.g., in mathematics), examples of the use of Specifications Grading in computer science courses are less common, but increasing. The goal of this tutorial is to introduce the concepts of Specifications Grading and explain how to apply these concepts to a wide range of computing courses and class sizes. You will learn that it can be implemented on a continuum, and is not an all or nothing approach. Each participant should leave the tutorial with the ability to revise their course syllabus and assignments to incorporate Specifications Grading. Access to many examples and resources will be provided.

The Hispanic in Computing group is an informal online community comprising students, faculty, and industry representatives dedicated to providing support to Hispanic students in computing. Established over a decade ago, the group organizes gatherings at national conferences to strengthen the social bonds that connect this small community. This Birds of a Feather seeks to bring together Hispanics and other members of the Computing Education Community interested in supporting Hispanic students.

Interest in teaching-track faculty positions has been steadily increasing as enrollments in computer science degree programs continue to trend upward. While departments have welcomed these new teaching-track faculty members, senior faculty, department chairs, and university committees often struggle with how to best evaluate these faculty members during the promotion process. In our experience, some universities try to use a "watered-down" version of the tenure-track promotion standards with the intent of uniformity. Other universities have created whole new processes, which may be better at capturing the differences in teaching-track positions, but also can create a "second-class citizen" status for the teaching-track faculty members.

The field of computer science has a problem of representation-many groups are not represented in our classroom at levels approaching their composition in society. Unfortunately, the representation issue is a larger societal issue and begins well before students enter our institutions. Though we acknowledge that building inclusive and equitable classroom environments cannot increase representation by itself, it can have an impact on retention and inclusion for members of marginalized communities.

As proposed by Linda B. Nilson in Specifications Grading: Restoring Rigor, Motivating Students, and Saving Faculty Time, Specifications Grading is an assessment paradigm that relies on pass/fail grading of assignments and assessments, the structuring of course content into modules linked to learning outcomes, and the bundling of assignments and assessments within those modules. One intention of this type of course grading construct is to align assessment more closely with student attainment of intended learning outcomes. Many of the features of Specifications Grading make it more equitable. While there has been very visible work in incorporating Specifications Grading in some academic areas (e.g., in mathematics), examples of the use of Specifications Grading in computer science courses are less common. The goal of this tutorial is to introduce the concepts of Specifications Grading and explain how to apply these concepts to a wide range of computing courses and class sizes. You will learn that it can be implemented on a continuum, and is not an all or nothing approach. Each participant should leave the tutorial with the ability to revise their course syllabus and assignments to incorporate Specifications Grading. Access to many examples and resources will be provided.

The Hispanics in Computing group has been around for over a decade and serves as a networking group bringing together members of this community. Members of the group organize gatherings at national conferences to strengthen the social ties that connect this small community. This Birds of a Feather seeks to bring together Hispanics and other members of the CS Education Community interested in providing support to Hispanics. The Hispanics in Computing community was founded in 2009. Since then, the group has been meeting at annual conferences as a way to provide networking opportunities for Hispanic students and professors. As an added benefit, this group has become a resource to the larger computing community. The group has grown in numbers and in their online presence hosting a Facebook group, LinkedIn group, and a website. But by far, the most active medium of communication is the Hispanics in Computing listserv with more than 400 members. This group serves as a source of mentors for students and faculty, as a point of dissemination for faculty positions, and as a way to discuss topics relevant to the community. This gathering at the Technical Symposium will allow Hispanics to meet face to face and discuss issues important to our community. As the number of Hispanics in our classrooms grows, it is important that we provide mentors and role models for these new students.

The session will present the final report of an NSF sponsored workshop tasked with creating a vision for computing education for the next 15 years. Within several broad themes identified, the panelists were asked to probe further into where the field should be heading and what difficult questions we need to tackle. We will use the final report as a basis for discussion with the attendees and ask them the same hard questions we asked ourselves when writing this report to see how these questions shape their views of where computing education needs to be in the next 15 years.

This innovative practice paper describes our experiences with alternative grading practices in introductory computing courses and two large public universities in the United States. Computing classrooms often use traditional grading practices involving allocating points to assignments, deducting points for mistakes and tardiness, and combining assignment scores using a weighted average to determine grades. Recent research suggests that these practices may diminish achievement, discourage students, and suppress effort to such an extent that they are considered by some as detrimental. We approach our work as an exploratory case study, without predefined research questions or hypotheses. Our experiences began with the adoption of specifications grading. We outline the grading scheme applied to traditional programming assignments and exams/quizzes, and discuss the initial integration of these schemes with conventional auto-grading tools. We delve into student perceptions of alternative grading, their utilization of flexible deadlines, and resubmission opportunities. We conclude with a discussion of two challenges encountered during our exploration: student acceptance of a novel grading form, and the adaptation of tools designed for traditional grading to support alternative grading mechanisms. Our early exploration aims to inspire further research on the use of alternative grading in computing. It is clear from our observations that simply implementing the practices does not ensure the equitable and inclusive outcomes that can be achieved with these practices. If students are not prepared to use these practices, they find them difficult to understand and can feel that they are not being treated fairly. Additionally, we wish to foster a community of practice to assist faculty members exploring these changes, with the goal of creating more equitable and inclusive classrooms.

It is often the case that computer science classrooms use traditional grading practices where points are allocated to assignments, mistakes result in point deductions, and assignment scores are combined using some form of weighted averaging to determine grades. Unfortunately, traditional grading practices have been shown to reduce achievement, discourage students, and suppress effort to such an extent that some common elements of traditional grading practices have been termed toxic. Using grades to reward or punish student behavior does not encourage learning and instead increases anxiety and stress. These toxic elements are present throughout computing education and computer science classrooms in the form of late penalties, lack of credit for code that doesn't compile or pass certain unit tests, among others. These types of metrics, that evaluate behavior are often influenced by implicit bias, factors outside of the classrooms (e.g., part-time employment), and family life situations (e.g., students who are caregivers). Often, students in these situations are disproportionately from low-socioeconomic backgrounds and predominantly students of color. Through this paper, we will present a case for adoption of equitable grading practices and a call for additional support in classroom and teaching technologies as well as support from administrations both at the department and university level. By adopting a community of practice approach, we argue that we can support new faculty making these changes, which would be more equitable and inclusive. Further, these practices have been shown to better support student learning and can help increase student learning gains and retention.

The field of computer science has a problem of representation-many groups are not represented in our classroom at levels approaching their composition in society. Unfortunately, the representation issue is a larger societal issue and begins well before students enter our institutions. Though we acknowledge that building inclusive and equitable classroom environments cannot increase representation by itself, it can have an impact on retention and inclusion for members of marginalized communities.

As proposed by Linda B. Nilson in Specifications Grading: Restoring Rigor, Motivating Students, and Saving Faculty Time, Specifications Grading is an assessment paradigm that relies on pass/fail grading of assignments and assessments, the structuring of course content into modules linked to learning outcomes, and the bundling of assignments and assessments within those modules. One intention of this type of course grading construct is to align assessment more closely with student attainment of intended learning outcomes. Many of the features of Specifications Grading make it more equitable. While there has been very visible work in incorporating Specifications Grading in some academic areas (e.g., in mathematics), examples of the use of Specifications Grading in computer science courses are less common. The goal of this workshop is to introduce the concepts of Specifications Grading and explain how to apply these concepts to a wide range of computing courses and class sizes. Each participant should leave the workshop with the ability to revise their course syllabus and assignments to incorporate Specifications Grading. Access to many examples and resources will be provided.

Researchers stipulate that a mental model of a system comprises two types of sub-components: parts andstate changes. CS education researchers have noted that state changes in a program are some of the most troublesome concepts to understand. Furthermore, challenges understanding a program's dynamic state changes persist in beginning students even after instruction. Drawing from the theories of mental models, we decomposed arrays into its sub-components of parts andstate changes. Using a questionnaire, we elicited CS1 students' mental models after they received instruction on arrays and then we analyzed and compared the correctness of their mental models with a focus on this decomposition. We compared the mental model correctness of the parts and state changes components. We found that the participants' mental model correctness of parts was significantly higher (i.e., more correct responses) than the mental model correctness of state changes, regardless of teaching modality (online or in-person) or prior programming experience. Moreover, participants with prior programming experience have higher mental model correctness (both for parts and state changes) than participants with no prior programming experience. We close with a discussion of the implications of these findings for introductory courses and highlight recommendations from the literature on ways to teach dynamic aspects of programming.

The Hispanics in Computing group has been around for over a decade and serves as a networking group bringing together members of this community. Members of the group organize gatherings at national conferences to strengthen the social ties that connect this small community. This Birds of a Feather seeks to bring together Hispanics and other members of the CS Education Community interested in providing support to Hispanics.

This paper investigates CS1 students' misconceptions of Java arrays. Each student entering a CS1 course has an initial mental model with a system of beliefs or intuitions about the course domain. The student's initial mental model largely impacts how they integrate new information into it. Oftentimes, these initial mental models are filled with misconceptions. If these misconceptions could be identified early in the semester, educators can attempt to address them with instruction or other educational interventions. But identifying these misconceptions cannot rely on qualitative methods due to the large sections in computing. Instead, we use a quantitative approach to collect assertions that exist in a student mental model. Then we use this representation of mental models to identify misconceptions. We provide a definition of a programming misconception based on mental model theories and use a questionnaire to identify misconceptions based on mental model consistency. We define a mental model as a collection of assertions, and we define a consistently chosen wrong assertion as a misconception. We have broken down Java arrays into a set of parts and state changes. The parts include array name, index, type, and element access. The state changes include array declaration, array instantiation, assignment of literals, and the more general assignment of arrays. We placed 30 wrong assertions multiple times as distractors in our questionnaire. In this paper, we report on our data collection and discuss the 16 misconceptions of arrays found to be held by novice programmers before classroom instruction on arrays. Nine misconceptions were documented for parts components and seven for state changes. Our results show that over half of our participants (out of 93) held at least one misconception before learning arrays in classrooms. CS1 students mostly held misconceptions related to the arrays' declarations (state change), and name, and element access (parts). From our data, the top most common misconceptions were about array declarations and initialization.

A hands-on session for creating department-level plans to coordinate Broadening Participation in Computing (BPC) work. Departmental BPC Plans can help provide continuity and greater impact in BPC work and provide opportunities for more faculty to engage. The workshop is organized around a series of guided hands-on activities selecting and refining specific goals and activities with the final result being an outline of a full BPC plan. We also include some discussion of next steps and invite participants to join our active Slack workspace. Individuals interested in this workshop may also be interested in the follow-on workshop, Departmental BPC Plans 2 - Finalizing your Plan.

A hands-on session for finalizing a Departmental BPC Plans for verification on BPCnet.org. Verification of a Departmental BPC Plan enables faculty from an institution to use it as part of a grant submission to the National Science Foundation (NSF). This workshop is intended for people from the United States who have an existing Departmental BPC Plan or who will have created one in the workshop "Departmental BPC Plans 1." The workshop is organized around a series of guided hands-on activities to help participants complete a draft of a Departmental BPC Plan that can be Verified by BPCnet.org.

By virtue of being underrepresented in computing, Hispanic women completing a Ph.D. face additional challenges starting their new careers. Completing the dissertation, applying for jobs, interviewing, and negotiating job offers are made more difficult by the lack of a community of mentors that fully understands their intersectional identities. This panel presents the challenges faced and the accomplishments of three recent Hispanic women Ph.D. recipients as they navigated the last stages of the dissertation, applied for jobs, considered job offers, and started their professional careers in computing.

As proposed by Linda B. Nilson in Specifications Grading: Restoring Rigor, Motivating Students, and Saving Faculty Time, Specifications Grading is an assessment paradigm that relies on pass/fail grading of assignments and assessments, the structuring of course content into modules linked to learning outcomes, and the bundling of assignments and assessments within those modules. One intention of this type of course grading construct is to align assessment more closely with student attainment of intended learning outcomes. Many of the features of Specifications Grading make it more equitable. While there has been very visible work in incorporating Specifications Grading in some academic areas (e.g., in mathematics), examples of the use of Specifications Grading in computer science courses are less common. The goal of this workshop is to introduce the concepts of Specifications Grading and explain how to apply these concepts to a wide range of computing courses and class sizes. Each participant should leave the workshop with the ability to revise their course syllabus and assignments to incorporate Specifications Grading. The workshop presenters, having more than twenty-five years of combined experience implementing Specification Grading, will provide access to many examples and resources.

The field of computer science has a problem of representation - many groups are not represented in our classroom at levels approaching their composition in society. Unfortunately, the representation issue is a larger societal issue and begins well before students enter our institutions. Though we acknowledge that building inclusive and equitable classroom environments cannot increase representation by itself, it can have an impact on retention and inclusion for members of marginalized communities.

The Hispanics in Computing group has been around for over a decade and serves as a networking group bringing together members of this community. Members of the group organize gatherings at national conferences to strengthen the social ties that connect this small community. This Birds of a Feather seeks to bring together Hispanics and other members of the CS Education Community interested in providing support to Hispanics.

Online computer science courses, such as those run by virtual public high schools, can help reach students in schools where funding constraints limit student opportunity. Many schools cannot afford computer science teachers, but with virtual course offerings, students can receive the same learning opportunities regardless of physical location or funding limitations. Due to the increasing demand for online programs, there is a similar demand for high-quality online professional development opportunities. While a substantial body of research focuses on online computer science educators identifying current needs in CS education, additional research is still needed to provide strategies that strengthen the effectiveness of online computer science courses.

Creating effective professional development is critical to support high school teachers who teach computer science (CS) online. The context of this study is based on a current Research to Practice Partnership (RPP) between the University of North Carolina at Charlotte in the United States and North Carolina Virtual Public School (NCVPS). Ten high school teachers from the NCVPS who teach CS online participated in a summer workshop and recommended design, facilitation, and evaluation strategies to be included in effective professional development (PD). The summer workshop was conducted synchronously via Zoom. It provided the opportunity to discuss teacher perceptions related to the research questions "What design, facilitation, and assessment strategies are helpful to include in an AP Computer Science Advanced course?" and "What recommendations do you have for designing an online professional development course for high school teachers to teach computer science online?" The questions were posed through an online collaborative Jamboard, and the affinity diagram method was used for data collection and document analysis was conducted. The teacher posts were qualitatively analyzed to identify common themes. Findings for professional development on content design included CS content, how to teach CS, and CS tools and activities. For assessment, they recommended content knowledge assessments, including lab assignments, single and pair programming, and coding assessments. They recommended tools for supplemental instruction, integration of discussion boards for interaction, and tools and strategies to provide feedback for professional development.

The session will present an overview of findings of a recently funded NSF workshop that set out to examine the pressing issues for computing education research for the next 15 years. Based on dialogs for scholars working in this area, the workshop participants developed a series of themes and topics that they felt should become the focus of computing education research efforts for the next 15 years. Main themes that emerged and will be discussed in this session include: diversity, equity, inclusion, ethics, broadening participation, teaching, learning, K-12, research to practice, computing's connection to other fields, and computing education research disciplinary issues. The session will focus on interesting research questions from each of these areas that are ripe to be explored as well as enablers and blockers to the progress of this work.

Broadening participation in computing (BPC) requires our individual and collective effort. The National Science Foundation (NSF) is leading an effort in the USA to encourage NSF grant awardees and all computing departments to create BPC plans. Panelists will share resources and advice for how attendees can get involved. Students, staff, and faculty can all play an important role in broadening participation in computing. Because the NSF effort and supporting resources on BPCnet.org are relatively new, the panel will introduce these efforts and share how attendees can help by sharing information within their institution and broader network. The NSF-funded project BPCnet.org has resources for developing and enacting BPC plans.

As proposed by Linda B. Nilson in Specifications Grading: Restoring Rigor, Motivating Students, and Saving Faculty Time, Specifications Grading is an assessment paradigm that relies on pass/fail grading of assignments and assessments, the structuring of course content into modules linked to learning outcomes, and the bundling of assignments and assessments within those modules. One intention of this type of course grading construct is to align assessment more closely with student attainment of intended learning outcomes. While there has been very visible work in incorporating Specifications Grading in some academic areas (e.g., in mathematics), examples of the use of Specifications Grading in computer science courses are less common. The goal of this workshop is to introduce the concepts of Specifications Grading and explain how to apply these concepts to a wide range of computing courses and class sizes. Each participant should leave the workshop with the ability to revise their course syllabus and assignments to incorporate Specifications Grading. Access to many examples and resources will be provided.

SIGCSE is packed with teaching insights and inspiration. However, we get these insights and inspiration from hearing our colleagues talk about their teaching. Why not just watch them teach? This session does exactly that. Six exceptional educators will present their favorite piece of innovative lecture content just as they would to their students. The moderator, Colleen Lewis, will describe the central pedagogical move within the innovation and how this connects to education research. The goal of the session is to inspire SIGCSE attendees by highlighting innovative instruction by exceptional educators. The specific content of the innovative instruction may be applicable for some attendees, and the discussion of the underlying pedagogical move within each innovation can be applied across the attendees' teaching.

A mental model is a knowledge structure that reflects a learner's understanding, action, and behavior about a device in the real world. Novice programmers have been found to have inconsistent and flawed mental models of very basic programming concepts. This poster presents the development of a multiple-choice questionnaire to elicit and measure the consistency of a novice programmer's mental model of arrays in Java.

The CS-Ed Podcast's theme for season 2 is "Where should we go from here?" Three of the episodes focused on equity. This panel consists of all the podcast guests that spoke on this topic and the podcast host will serve as the moderator. In their episode, each panelist focused on a different aspect of equity, including cultural competence, supporting students of color, and how to make computer science education an integral and sustained part of learning through systemic change. This panel will be a conversation on equity by having the guests react to each other's episodes and to questions from the audience.

Diagrams in textbooks are an essential tool to explain concepts. Aneffective diagram should help a novice learner to build a runnable mental model, increase recall, and improve problem-solving skills. Richard Mayer and others suggest that to have an impact on the readers' mental model, diagrams must document two major features:system topology andcomponent behavior. The presence of these two features makes a diagramexplanative. In this paper, we propose a framework of what constitutesexplanative diagram for variables, arrays, and objects based on Mayer et al.'s definition. We used our framework to analyze diagrams of variables, arrays, and objects in 15 commonly used introductory Java textbooks to ascertain how these concepts are illustrated, annotated and explained. Our results show that none of the textbooks provide what we would consider as explanative diagrams. We conclude with an assessment of diagrams in introductory programming textbooks and present open questions for further study.

Drawing is an effective learning tool, incorporating engagement, increasing recall, and improving problem-solving skills. However, it is not widely practiced by computer science educators. This poster reports an analysis of 15 commonly used CS1 textbooks to investigate whether authors encourage students to draw basic programming concepts. One CS1 textbook contained textual encouragement to draw class diagrams and exercises to draw UML diagrams. One other book asked students to graphically represent a class object. We found no encouragement or instructions to draw variables or arrays.

The 2019 global pandemic and the social protests in support of Black Lives Matter has made it clear that society has yet to eradicate systemic racism. Can computing education help? Academics, particularly in STEM fields, are often shielded from these conversations as we think they belong in a social science classroom. The effect of the pandemic and the protests has made it abundantly clear that we can no longer be apathetic about systemic issues that impact equity in society. Based on personal experience and on years of participation in Broadening Participation in Computing (BPC) efforts, the author suggests actions that CS departments can do to fight inequity. These can be classified into several broad categories: (a) provide more support and opportunities to students from underrepresented groups, (b) encourage faculty to become active participants in addressing inequity, (c) update the computing curriculum to be more inclusive and culturally responsive, and (d) evolve the departmental infrastructure to manage diversity, equity and inclusion.

Diagrams in textbooks are essential tools in explaining concepts. An effective diagram helps a novice learner build a runnable mental model, increase recall and improve problem-solving skills. Richard Mayer suggests that for a diagram to be effective, it must beexplanative and, thus, document two major features: \textitsystem topology andcomponent behaviour. We surveyed diagrams of variables, arrays and objects in 15 commonly used introductory Java textbooks to investigate if the diagrams are explanative. This abstract presents the analysis of arrays.

The computing discipline is struggling to diversify its ranks. While we recognize the value of a diverse workforce, we often lack the language to discuss the issues. We even struggle to justify the benefits that might come from diversifying our ranks. This workshop presents concepts and frameworks about diversity with a focus on Broadening Participation in Computing (BPC). The workshop will be broken up into three parts. In part 1, What is diversity?, we will provide some basic definitions and take a quick tour of resources available for BPC. We will expand the view diversity by considering a multi-disciplinary perspective (e.g., scientific, educational, legal, business). In Part 2, Engagement with Diversity concepts, the participants will get to have a candid conversation about different themes in diversity. Among the concepts discussed, we will explore issues of privilege, identity, implicit bias, micro aggressions, stereotype threat, and imposter syndrome. In Part 3, What can we do to improve diversity?, we will discuss why diversity is relevant to computing and why we should support the case for diversity. We present two frameworks of diversity & inclusion, the inclusive excellence model (AACU) and the cultural wealth model (T.J. Yosso). We explore how these models could be used in academic settings to make computing more inclusive. While the bulk of the conversation will be about diversity in academic programs with particular emphasis on students, the topics discussed also apply to faculty hiring and are relevant to creating an inclusive culture in any organization.

In computer science, students could benefit from exposure to critical programming concepts from multiple perspectives. Peer review is one method to allow students to experience authentic uses of the concepts in an activity that is not itself programming. In this work, we examine how to implement the peer review process in early, object-oriented computer science courses as a way to increase the students’ knowledge of programming concepts, specifically Abstraction, Decomposition, and Encapsulation, and to develop their higher-level thinking skills. We are exploring the peer review process, the effects of the type of review on the reviewers , and the results this has on the students’ learning. To study these ideas, we used peer review activities in CS2 classes at two universities over the course of a semester. Using three groups (one reviewing their peers, one reviewing the instructor, and one completing small design or coding assignments), we measured the students’ conceptual understanding throughout the semester with concept maps and the reviews they completed. We found that reviewing helped students learn Decomposition, especially those reviewing the instructor's programs, but we did not find that it improved the students’ level of thinking. Overall, reviews (peer or otherwise) are beneficial for teaching Decomposition to CS2 students and can be used as an alternative method for teaching other object-oriented programming concepts.

No abstract available.

Proliferation of small computing-enabled devices coupled with the richness of communication infrastructure has made location-based computing a reality. Location-based reminders (LBRs) provide alarms and notices to users based on their location. These are typically used to remind us to complete a to-do task at a particular location. The current design of LBRs fails to take advantage of prospective memory theory. We hypothesize that if the encoding stage provides a closer match to the retrieval stage, then location recognition and task recall in LBRs will improve at retrieval time. We conducted a between subjects experiment and measured performance as location recognition and task recall. We found strong evidence in support that a first-person view benefits prospective remembering the most. We close with a discussion of the implications for the design of the encoding stage for future LBR systems.

Email has become deeply embedded in many users’ daily lives. To investigate how email features in users lives, particularly how users attend to email, we ran a 2-week study that logged interactions with email and gathered diary entries related to individual sessions. Our study showed that the majority of attentional effort is around reading email and participating in conversations, as opposed to email management (deleting, moving, flagging emails). We found that participants attended to email primarily based on notifications, instead of the number of unread messages in their inbox. We present our results through answering several questions, and leverage conversation analysis, particularly conversational openings, to explicate several issues. Our findings point to inefficiencies in email as a communication medium, mainly, around how summons are (or are not) issued. This results in an increased burden on email users to maintain engagement and determine (or construct) the appropriate moment for interruption.

In this paper we describe a study exploring why users spend more time in email than originally intended, which we call getting lost in email. To study this phenomenon, we implemented an IMAP logger that also dispatched diary entries to collect data for twenty participants over a two week period. Most participants reported getting lost in email during both short and long sessions. Our analysis suggests two primary factors in getting lost: the number of emails awaiting a reply and whether or not the session caused an interruption. We conclude that much of the problem around getting lost in email is in managing the tension between promptly responding to messages while limiting engagement with email.

Researchers have been studying personal information management (PIM) for many years, but little exists by way of practical advice for how individuals should manage their own information. We employed the Delphi Method to engage PIM researchers with expertise in a variety of relevant areas in a five-round extended dialog about PIM practices. Participants identified key everyday choices of PIM, suggested alternatives, and identified pros and cons of each alternative. Our contributions include: 1) a set of 36 PIM practices, along with pros, cons, and recommendations for or against each practice, 2) directions of future research and development including "near-future" improvements in tool support and 3) a detailed description of how we applied the Delphi Method to study PIM and how it might be used more widely in HCI research as a complement to more established methods of inquiry.

The pace of technology for use in computing education is staggering. In the last five years, the following technologies have completely transformed our teaching: Piazza, Google Docs, PandaGrader (now GradeScope), YouTube, Doodle, Skype, Google Hangout, Khan Academy, etc. Hardware has also played a part; we love our Zoom H2 digital voice recorder (for CD-quality lecture audio), Blue Yeti USB mike (for audio / videoconferences), and iClickers (for engaging students in class).

Understanding the capabilities of adversaries (e.g., how much the adversary knows about a target) is important for building strong security defenses. Computing an adversary's knowledge about a target requires new modeling techniques and experimental methods. Our work describes a quantitative anal

Software testing has become popular in introductory courses, but many educators are unfamiliar with how to write software tests or how they might be used in the classroom. This workshop provides a practical introduction to JUnit for educators. JUnit is the Java testing framework that is most commonly used in the classroom. Participants will learn how to write and run JUnit test cases; how-to's for common classroom uses (as a behavioral addition to an assignment specification, as part of manual grading, as part of automated grading, as a student-written activity, etc.); and common solutions to tricky classroom problems (testing standard input/output, randomness, main programs, assignments with lots of design freedom, assertions, and code that calls exit()).

The computing profession is lacking representation that mirrors the fabric of society in the United States. Most studies show a low percentage of participation for women and minority groups. In this paper, we present our experiences conducting a week-long Human-Computer Interaction (HCI) workshop with underrepresented middle school girls. Our description is focused on an activity where girls created a paper prototype for a chat application. We present qualitative results showing characteristics of the prototypes built, and discuss the participant responses to a few of the questions in an interview at the end of the week. Our results reveal that paper prototyping can be used as a motivator for a career path in computer science. In spite of the negative stereotypes that the underrepresented females had prior to the intervention, the HCI workshop revealed a user-centric component of computer science that gave participants a positive perception of the discipline.

Computing has seen dramatic decreases in the major across the past decade, especially among under-represented populations. Recently, however, some institutions have begun to see an increase. What are these departments doing to reverse this historical trend? Learn about practices undertaken by U.S. universities that have increased undergraduate enrollments overall, with particular increases in female enrollment and retention. Computer science faculty from Cal Poly San Luis Obispo, Virginia Tech and Florida A&M will present their interventions and results. National Center for Women & Information Technology will share results from other institutions that also have used evidence-based practices resulting in increased enrollments and distribute materials describing those practices.

Software testing has become popular in introductory courses, but many educators are unfamiliar with how to write software tests or how they might be used in the classroom. This workshop provides a practical introduction to JUnit for educators. JUnit is the Java testing framework that is most commonly used in the classroom. Participants will learn how to write and run JUnit test cases; how-to's for common classroom uses (as a behavioral addition to an assignment specification, as part of manual grading, as part of automated grading, as a student-written activity, etc.); and common solutions to tricky classroom problems (testing standard input/output, randomness, main programs, assignments with lots of design freedom, assertions, and code that calls exit()). Laptop recommended.

The Library for Interface Testing (LIFT) supports writing unit tests for Java applications with graphical user interfaces (GUIs). Current frameworks for GUI testing provide the necessary tools, but are complicated and difficult to use for beginners, often requiring a significant amount of time to learn. LIFT takes the approach that unit testing GUIs should be no different than testing any other type of code. By providing a set of frequently used filters for identifying GUI components and a set of operations for acting on those components, LIFT lets programmers quickly and easily test their GUI applications.

Computer science students need experience with essential concepts and professional activities. Peer review is one way to meet these goals. In this work, we examine the students' attitudes towards and engagement in the peer review process, in early, object-oriented, computer science courses. To do this, we used peer review exercises in two CS2 classes at neighboring universities over the course of a semester. Using three groups (one reviewing their peers, one reviewing the instructor, and one completing small design or coding exercises), we measured the students' attitudes, their perceptions of their abilities, and how many of the reviews they completed. We found moderately positive attitudes that generally increased over time but were not significantly different between groups. We also saw a lower completion rate for students reviewing peers than for the other groups. The students' internal motivation, as measured by their need for cognition, was not shown to be strongly related to their attitudes nor to the number of assignments completed. Overall, our results show a strong need for external motivation to help engage students in peer reviews.

In computer science, students could benefit from exposure to critical programming concepts from multiple perspectives. Peer review is one method to allow students to experience authentic uses of the concepts in a non-programming manner. In this work, we examine the use of the peer review process in early, object-oriented, computer science courses as a way to develop the reviewers' knowledge of object-oriented programming concepts, specifically Abstraction, Decomposition, and Encapsulation.

This paper reports on a quantitative evaluation of five years of data collected in the first three programming courses at Virginia Tech. The dataset involves a total of 89,879 assignment submissions by 1,101 different students. Assignment results were partitioned into two groups: scores above 80% (A/B) and scores below 80% (C/D/F). To investigate student behaviors that result in differing levels of achievement, all students who consistently received A/B scores and all students who consistently received C/D/F scores were removed from the dataset. A within-subjects comparison of the scores received by the remaining individuals was performed. Further, time and code-size data that is difficult to compare directly between different courses was normalized.This study revealed several significant results. When students received A/B scores, they started earlier and finished earlier than when the same students received C/D/F scores. They also wrote slightly more program code. They did not appear to spend any more time on their work, however. Approximately two-thirds of the A/B scores were received by individuals who started more than a day in advance of the deadline, while approximately two-thirds of the C/D/F scores were received by individuals who started on the last day or later. One possible explanation is that students who start earlier simply have more time to seek assistance when they get stuck.

Dynamic memory management and the use of pointers are critical topics in teaching the C++ language. They are also some of the most difficult for students to grasp properly. The responsibility of ensuring that students understand these concepts does not end with the instructor's lectures---a library enhanced with diagnostics beyond those provided by the language's run-time system itself is a useful tool for giving students more detailed information when their code fails.

Many software systems fail to address their intended purpose because of a lack of user involvement and requirements deficiencies. This paper discusses the elaboration of a requirements-analysis process that integrates a critical-parameter-based approach to task modeling within a user-centric design framework. On one hand, adapting task models to capture requirements bridges the gap between scenarios and critical parameters which benefits design from the standpoint of user involvement and accurate requirements. On the other hand, using task models as a reusable component leverages requirements reuse which benefits design by increasing quality while simultaneously reducing development costs and time-to-market. First, we present the establishment of both a user-centric and reuse-centric requirements process along with its implementation within an integrated design tool suite. Secondly, we report the design, procedures, and findings of two user studies aimed at assessing the feasibility for novice designers to conduct the process as well as evaluating the resulting benefits upon requirements-analysis deliverables, requirements quality, and requirements reuse.

This demonstration introduces participants to using Web-CAT, an open-source automated grading system. Web-CAT is customizable and extensible, allowing it to support a wide variety of programming languages and assessment strategies. Web-CAT is most well-known as the system that grades students on how well they test their own code, with experimental evidence that it offers greater learning benefits than more traditional output-comparison grading. Participants will learn how to set up courses, prepare reference tests, set up assignments, and allow graders to manually grade for design.

Tools like JUnit and its relatives are making software testing reachable even for introductory students. At the same time, however, many introductory computer sciences courses use graphical interfaces as an "attention grabber" for students and as a metaphor for teaching object-oriented programming. Unfortunately, developing software tests for programs that have significant graphical user interfaces is beyond the abilities of typical students (and, for that matter, many educators). This paper describes a framework for combining readily available tools to create an infrastructure for writing tests for Java programs that have graphical user interfaces. These tests are level-appropriate for introductory students and fit in with current approaches in computer science education that incorporate testing in programming assignments. An analysis of data collected during actual student use of the framework in a CS1 course is presented.

In this paper we present our experience using code reviews in a CS2 course. In particular, we highlight a series of misunderstandings of object-oriented (OO) concepts we observed as a by-product of the code review exercise. In our activity, we asked students to review code, rate it using a rubric, and to justify their explanation. The students were asked to review two solutions to a project from a previous year. Through examples of their explanations, we found that students had a number of basic misunderstandings of object-oriented principles. In this paper, we present our observations of the misunderstandings, and present some general observations of how code reviews can be used as an assessment tool in CS2.

introduction Share on Introduction to keeping, refinding and sharing personal information Authors: Deborah Barreau University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill University of North Carolina at Chapel HillView Profile , Robert Capra University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill University of North Carolina at Chapel HillView Profile , Susan Dumais Microsoft Corporation Microsoft CorporationView Profile , William Jones University of Washington University of WashingtonView Profile , Manuel Pérez-Quiñones Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State UniversityView Profile Authors Info & Claims ACM Transactions on Information SystemsVolume 26Issue 4Article No.: 18pp 1–3https://doi.org/10.1145/1402256.1402257Published:07 October 2008Publication History 3citation0DownloadsMetricsTotal Citations3Total Downloads0Last 12 Months0Last 6 weeks0 Get Citation Alerts Save to binder temporarily unavailable - maintenance in progressSave to BinderCreate a New BinderNameCancelCreateExport CitationPublisher SiteGet Access

There is strong disagreement among many computer science educators as to whether UML tools can be effectively used in undergraduate computer science courses. Two of the main points of disagreement are whether the tools that exist are appropriate for undergraduate education and whether the learning curve for these tools is too steep for the benefits that they bring. We will discuss both tools for developing class diagrams, appropriate for CS1/CS2 courses as well as tools for developing use-case models, sequence diagrams, etc. – tools appropriate for advanced courses on such topics as object-oriented analysis and design, software engineering, etc.

A syllabus defines the contents of a course, as well as other information such as resources and assignments. In this paper, we report on our work towards creating a syllabus repository of Computer Science courses across universities in the USA. We present some statistics from our initial collection of 8000+ syllabi. We show a syllabus creator that is integrated with Moodle [5] moodle_2006_moodle, an open-source course management system, which allows for the creation of a syllabus for a particular course. Among other information, it includes knowledge units from the Computing Curricula 2001 body of knowledge. The goal of the syllabus repository is to provide added value to the Computer Science Education community, and we present some such offerings. We conclude by presenting our future plans for the syllabus repository. These include using automated techniques to collect and classify syllabi, providing recommendations to instructors when creating a syllabus, and allowing the community to share their syllabi automatically. The syllabus collection will be part of the Computing and Information Technology Interactive Digital Educational Library (CITIDEL), a collection of the National Science Digital Library (NSDL).

Adaptive learning systems aim to precisely tailor education and training to the individual needs of learners. Such systems use an internal model of a user's current knowledge to adjust the navigational affordances and presentation order of material. The user model is incrementally built and updated as the user demonstrates mastery by completing exercises and tests. Designing courses that are delivered adaptively involves addressing many complexities. This paper describes experiences designing the first adaptive module in a series intended to teach software testing skills. Experiences in using the first module and a preliminary evaluation of its effectiveness are presented.

Research is presented that examined the effects of various measures of prior computer science experience and cognitive abilities on overall performance in a CS2 course. Participants selected from the CS2 course at two southeastern state universities were used within this study, resulting in a sample size of 161 (School A, n = 76; School B, n = 85). School A is a mid-sized comprehensive university and School B is a large research-intensive university.Self-reported data were collected on measures of experience in object-oriented processing, UNIX programming, web design, computing platforms, and various CS experience. Further, cognitive abilities measures of spatial orientation, visualization, logical reasoning, and flexibility were administered.The results show that the schools significantly differed on all measures of cognitive ability and most measures of prior computer science experience. The schools also differed on the extent to which these measures were related to overall course performance. The results suggest that, for school A, the cognitive ability visualization and the prior computer science experience measure of OO processing were significantly related to course performance. However, when examining school B, no measures were found significant.

In introductory computer science courses, the Unified Modeling Language (UML) is commonly used to teach basic object-oriented design. However, there appears to be a lack of suitable software to support this task. Many of the available programs that support UML focus on developing code and not on enhancing learning. Programs designed for educational use sometimes have poor interfaces or are missing common and important features such as multiple selection and undo/redo. Hence the need for software that is tailored to an instructional environment and that has all the useful and needed functionality for that specific task. This is the purpose of minimUML. It provides a minimum amount of UML, just what is commonly used in beginning programming classes, and a simple, usable interface. In particular, minimUML is designed to support abstract design while supplying features for exploratory learning and error avoidance. It supports functionality that includes multiple selection, undo/redo, flexible printing, cut and paste, and drag and drop. In addition, it allows for the annotation of diagrams, through text or free-form drawings, so students can receive feedback on their work. minimUML was developed with the goals of supporting ease of use, of supporting novice students, and of requiring no prior training for its use. This article presents the rationale behind the minimUML design, a description of the tool, and the results of usability evaluations and student feedback on the use of the tool.

This demonstration will illustrate the use of existing and proposed tools in CITIDEL for finding existing resources to integrate into a course and for developing well structured descriptions of class and laboratory activities for sharing with the computing community.

In this paper, we evaluate the effects of applying programming language subsets to the programming environment used by novice (CS1) students in a closed-laboratory setting, as well as reducing the complexity of the user interface for the environment. Our goal in this effort was to assess if such interface and application-level changes adversely impact the student or hinder the later migration to a traditional professional-strength programming environment.We focus on the comparison of the quantitative data captured from the closed-laboratory sessions (assignment grades, number of syntax / semantic errors, and the number of compilation / execution attempts) involving subjects that used a new programming environment featuring a less complex interface in two forms: one lacking support of language subsets, and one supporting the application of language subsets.We found that while using the environment supporting the application of language subsets, there was no difference in the compilation-attempt rate, the number of errors did not increase, and student grades were equivalent between the experiment groups. Additionally, following a migration to the professional environment from the simplified environment, student grades were equivalent to those that had used the professional environment throughout the experiment. Student reaction to the experimental environment was very positive, especially related to the removal of unused tools and project management features.

This study examined ways to improve students' chances of success learning design concepts through the use of Object-Oriented Programming and Design (OOP&D) patterns by examining potentially effective ways to teach such patterns to novice programmers. Using hierarchical tree, complete-linkage analysis to survey a group of design experts, the study developed an order in which those experts believed thirty fundamental OOP&D patterns should be taught to optimize effective student learning. Once that basic order was identified, it became possible to divide the patterns into six sequential phases of patterns instruction to allow both maximal teaching and learning. Although the study did not present a conclusively effective approach for OOP&D teaching, it did provide information essential for future sequential phase patterns research.

We report an empirical study of nonprogrammers' mental models regarding particular concerns in web application development such as input validation, database lookup, and overview-detail relationships. The goal of the study was to understand how nonprogrammers think about the data and logic underlying a web application. In continuing work, we are using this understanding as a basis for the design of tools and development resources that are intuitive and easy to use. The current paper describes the empirical work that was done and discusses its implications for the design of end-user web development tools that could be used to develop web applications of intermediate complexity.

A problem with trying to create voice interfaces to existing HTML Web pages is that most Web pages are designed and optimized for graphical browsing. Our approach has been to consider voice interfaces to Web information not as a replacement for desktop browsing using a graphical interface, but as a way to meet mobile users' needs for specific information. Such an interaction can be more directed and focused in nature than open-ended browsing tasks. In order to create usable voice interfaces to Web information, we have identified a set of information structures that are commonly found on Web pages and explored how they can be presented and navigated by voice. We have codified these structures in an XML annotation language called VXPL (VoiceXML Precursor Language) that can be used to annotate existing HTML code to indicate where these information structures exist. VXPL is designed so that it can be used for manual or automatic annotation of HTML code. In addition, we have implemented an automated transcoder that converts VXPL into VoiceXML with increased support for navigation and usability of the resulting interface.

This demonstration allows conference attendees to gain experience in using the facilities of the NSF National Science Technology Engineering and Mathematics Education Digital Library (NSDL) to prepare and present College or university level classes.

The NSDL consists of collections of materials accessible online, as well as many tools and services intended to enhance learning. Tools and services will support students and as well as faculty. This session will provide a status report on the state of the NSDL, its content, tools, and services. The session includes specific presentations of several services included in the NSDL. Session attendees discuss current and proposed initiatives, and offer suggestions about needs of highest priority.

We show that partial evaluation can be usefully viewed as a programming model for realizing mixed-initiative functionality in interactive applications. Mixed-initiative interaction between two participants is one where the parties can take turns at any time to change and steer the flow of interaction. We concentrate on the facet of mixed-initiative referred to as 'unsolicited reporting' and demonstrate how out-of-turn interactions by users can be modeled by 'jumping ahead' to nested dialogs (via partial evaluation). Our approach permits the view of dialog management systems in terms of their support for staging and simplifying inter-actions; we characterize three different voice-based interaction technologies using this viewpoint. In particular, we show that the built-in form interpretation algorithm (FIA) in the VoiceXML dialog management architecture is actually a (well disguised) combination of an interpreter and a partial evaluator.

No abstract available.

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Increasing use of automation in computer systems, such as advanced cockpits, presents special challenges in the design of user interfaces. The challenge is particularly difficult when automation is intermittent because the interface must support smooth transitions from automated to manual mode. A theory of direct manipulation predicts that this interface style will smooth the transition. Interfaces were designed to test the prediction and to evaluate two aspects of direct manipulation, semantic distance and engagement. Empirical results supported the theoretical prediction and also showed that direct engagement can have some adverse effects on another concurrent manual task. Generalizations of our results to other complex systems are presented.

article Free Access Share on SMALL-Ada: personal computer courseware for studying concurrent programming Authors: Michael B. Feldman Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, The George Washington University, Washington, DC Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, The George Washington University, Washington, DCView Profile , Arthur Vargas Lopes Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, The George Washington University, Washington, DC Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, The George Washington University, Washington, DCView Profile , Manuel Perez Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, The George Washington University, Washington, DC Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, The George Washington University, Washington, DCView Profile Authors Info & Claims ACM SIGCSE BulletinVolume 22Issue 1Feb. 1990pp 206–211https://doi.org/10.1145/319059.323453Published:01 February 1990Publication History 11citation202DownloadsMetricsTotal Citations11Total Downloads202Last 12 Months28Last 6 weeks9 Get Citation AlertsNew Citation Alert added!This alert has been successfully added and will be sent to:You will be notified whenever a record that you have chosen has been cited.To manage your alert preferences, click on the button below.Manage my AlertsNew Citation Alert!Please log in to your account Save to BinderSave to BinderCreate a New BinderNameCancelCreateExport CitationPublisher SiteeReaderPDF