We present an investigation of how sound can be used as a creative input by older adults to enable them to create visual art online either alone or in collaboration with others. Through longitudinal remote participatory design with a group of five older adults, we developed three playful and expressive web-based applications collectively called SoundBrush. Our results show how participants wanted to engage with sound and how sound plays into their expressive intentions in creative work. Participants valued sound-based interactions that were playful yet learnable, and preferred to rely on familiar sound inputs such as vocalization. Interactions that supported meaningful social interaction were appreciated, but collaborative interaction using sound proved challenging. For sound to function as a satisfying input, older adults wanted interactions that supported their own agency and authorship, kept accessibility in mind, and could produce visually coherent outcomes. We provide design considerations for sound-based creative interaction systems for older adults.

A two-stage exam (TSE) is an exam format where students write an exam individually and rewrite the same exam in collaboration with a group of peers. This Working Group investigates TSEs in post-secondary computer science courses. By collecting data from a variety of post-secondary institutions, we aim to identify correlations between course environment indicated through the CALI inventory and students' perceptions and performance on TSEs, with consideration for students in under-represented groups. Students will be given surveys upon completion of TSEs which include open-ended questions regarding their group's dynamics and perceptions of participating in a TSE. Instructors will also provide their experiences running and observing TSEs. This research aims to understand best practices for the implementation of TSEs.

Financial technology (fintech) has a growing impact on economic and social participation due to the increasing adoption of online banking and digital payments in everyday life. As fintech interests emerge in academic and industry work across the globe, critical needs and opportunities arise for ASSETS communities to lead and shape the discourse on accessible fintech. This workshop will bring together a diverse group of researchers and practitioners interested in developing a research agenda on designing accessible and inclusive fintech. We will take a timely step towards building a community to support continued discussion on the complex cultural and social contexts around fintech.

Older adults sometimes delegate banking tasks to trusted close others (family or friends). Increasingly those tasks are completed online, with older adults sharing passwords or account ownership to give delegates account access, which introduces privacy, security and financial misconduct risks. We propose that proxy accounts can support financial delegation while preserving older adults’ agency and that behavioral nudges can help delegates maintain financial propriety while performing banking tasks. We developed a high-fidelity proxy account prototype that uses behavioural nudges, and present findings from a think-aloud interaction study (n=21). We present results from the first empirical study of proxy accounts in the delegated banking context. Our results show: 1) positive responses to the fiduciary controls provided by proxy accounts, 2) that some nudges may have the potential to encourage propriety, and 3) that both mechanisms improve the delegate’s experience of banking on behalf of an older adult, while legitimizing their role as delegate.

As part of a graduate topics course in Computer Science Education, computer science students on project teams were assigned to investigate an undergraduate CS course. Each team examined course materials, interviewed the faculty member teaching the course, observed a class session of the course, produced a report of their findings, and then developed a research question and plan that could potentially be explored in the context of that course. We report on an interview study conducted to investigate the value of this course project from the perspective of the graduate students enrolled and the faculty members observed. Our findings indicate that the graduate students developed a deeper understanding of pedagogical challenges in computer science and wanted to engage further on the project. Faculty participants wanted more time with the teams and found that participating in the project provided a unique opportunity to reflect on their teaching practices.

Collaborative learning has been suggested as a promising approach to help older adults learn new technology, however, its effectiveness has been understudied in the context of feature-rich applications. We conducted an observational study with the aim of identifying aspects of collaborative learning, including characteristics of collaborative partners, that impact older adults' exploratory learning behaviour in feature-rich software. We recruited 22 participants (6 younger adults and 16 older adults) who formed 5 same-age and 6 mixed-age dyads. These dyads worked together remotely to explore a feature-rich application, which was new to them. We classified dyadic interactions into four different collaboration dynamics characterized by distinct attributes. We discovered that effective communication and the ability to navigate the software independently enabled a successful collaboration dynamic that empowered learners. We showed that trust between partners enabled effective communication and we observed that the existing relationship between partners strongly impacted their communication patterns. The more complicated study tasks required participants to validate the correctness of their work and this validation was particularly difficult for some novice older adults who did not benefit from transfer learning and struggled with navigation issues.

The environmental design field has established methodologies for designing indoor and outdoor environments and developed best practices for designing spaces to support human creativity. Thoring et al. have systematized current knowledge around the design of spaces in the physical world to facilitate creative processes into a series of ten propositions [47]. However, the COVID-19 pandemic has led to a surge in the use of online spatial platforms to support virtual co-working. How to design virtual workplaces to support various creative processes is an emergent and open question. Thus, we present an initial exploration of the opportunities and constraints we confronted while attempting to manifest Thoring et al.’s ten propositions for creative facilitation in Gather [9], a 2D virtual world platform.

This full paper presents the Collaborative Active Learning and Inclusiveness (CALI) inventory, and an analytical model using the CALI inventory, demographic data, mindset surveys, and knowledge mastery assessment, to explore relationships between classroom climate and student experiences. The CALI inventory enables the investigation of the impact of the student experience in an active learning classroom by distinguishing the factors that characterize the structure, social learning, and inclusive practices. The Structure Index includes components related to course setup, organization, assessment, grading, and communications. The Sociality Index includes components related to opportunities for students to interact with each other. The Inclusiveness Index includes components related to how the instructor communicates a sense of belonging to the students through a growth mindset and inclusive policies and practices. A CS Mindset Instrument was developed based on research that measured students' self-efficacy by evaluating the extent of variation in their self-perceived ability to accomplish a task, sense of belonging in computing, and professional identity development. Demographic data is collected that allows for an analysis using an intersectional lens to acknowledge the complexity of social and cultural contexts. The knowledge and mastery assessments capture changes in competency through pre-post mastery quizzes. The combination of CALI with other instruments, including those that characterize student mindset, identity, and levels of mastery, enables investigation of how various practices of inclusive and collaborative active learning have differential effects on students with different identities in computer science.

We present the results of a reflective, practice-based study with creative practitioners who contributed to the Art Track at Creativity & Cognition 2021. We investigate curating an interactive online gallery in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic, focusing on the opportunities afforded and design constraints imposed by the Gather.Town platform and the experiences of the participating practitioners. We present auto-ethnographic reflections from Author 1, who created the online gallery space. We draw on the experience of Author 2 in curatorial research to analyze the experience of emerging practice through interviews with participating artists and curators. Results show that many of the artists were positively surprised by the platform engagement opportunities and conference attendees’ engagement with the artworks at the gallery opening, and appreciated the equitable, global reach. Further analysis reveals a desire for future iterations, and an exploration of the platform in a hybrid context, alongside an in-person exhibition.

We present results of a survey (n=42) investigating how close others (family members, friends, or other community members) assist older adults with banking tasks in Canada. We asked what types of banking tasks they help with and what modalities they used. Our results show many close others help older adults by leveraging online banking, and this is especially true when the close other is an older adult themselves. We also found that close others who help older adults via online banking often know the online banking credentials for the older adults they assist, which presents privacy and security issues and could open the door to financial exploitation. Our results demonstrate the need for the design of online banking mechanisms that more explicitly acknowledge the nuanced and temporally changing role of close others in helping older adults with banking.

Data Videos (DVs), or animated infographics that tell stories with data, are becoming increasingly popular. Despite their potential to induce attitude change, little is explored about how to produce effective DVs. This paper describes two studies that explored factors linked to the potential of health DVs to improve viewers’ behavioural change intentions. We investigated: 1) how viewers’ affect is linked to their behavioural change intentions; 2) how these affect are linked to the viewers’ personality traits; 3) which attributes of DVs are linked to their persuasive potential. Results from both studies indicated that viewers’ negative affect lowered their behavioural change intentions. Individuals with higher neuroticism exhibited higher negative affect and were harder to convince. Finally, Study 2 proved that providing any solutions to the health problem, presented in the DV, made the viewers perceive the videos as more actionable while lowering their negative affect, and importantly, induced higher behavioural change intentions.

This full paper presents CALI 1.0: an inventory to capture the various components of collaborative active learning and inclusive practices in introductory CS courses, as a basis for studying their impact on a student’s ability to engage with course material and be successful in the course. Collaborative active learning is defined as a pedagogy where learners work with one another on activities that involve actively engaging with the course material through discussions, problem-solving, case studies, role plays, and other methods. CALI consists of three separate indices: Structure, Sociality, and Inclusiveness. The Structure Index includes components related to course setup, organization, assessment, grading, and communications. The Sociality Index includes components related to opportunities for students to interact with each other. The Inclusiveness Index includes components related to how the instructor communicates a sense of belonging to the students through a growth mindset and inclusive policies and practices. In this paper, we present the inventory and results from a focus group of faculty to gauge responses to using this inventory to capture the teaching components of their courses. We present CALI as a tool that can be used to study how teaching practices, e.g. inclusive and collaborative active learning pedagogies, impact course experiences for students in different demographic groups as well as a reflective tool for use by faculty while designing their courses.

We present EdgeSelect, a linear target selection interaction technique that utilizes a small portion of the smartwatch display, explicitly designed to mitigate the ‘fat finger’ and screen occlusion problems, two of the most common and well-known challenges when interacting with small displays. To design our technique, we first conducted a user study to answer which segments of the smartwatch display have the least screen occlusion while users are interacting with it. We use results from the first experiment to introduce EdgeSelect, a three-layer non-linear interaction technique, which can be used to interact with multiple co-adjacent graphs on the smartwatch by using a region that is the least prone to finger occlusion. In a second experiment, we explore the density limits of the targets possible with EdgeSelect. Finally, we demonstrate the generalizability of EdgeSelect to interact with various types of content.

Students have experienced incredible shifts in the in their learning environments, brought about by the response of universities to the ever-changing public health mandates driven by waves and stages of the coronavirus pandemic (COVID-19). Initially, these shifts in learning (mode of course delivery, course availability, etc.) were considered emergency responses. However, as the pandemic presses on, students have had to repeatedly adapt to the continuously evolving educational landscape as this global health crisis forced an "unprecedented global shift within higher education in the ways that we communicate with and educate students". This working group builds upon foundations and structure created by a 2021 ITICSE Working Group exploring the effects of COVID-19 on teaching and learning from a faculty perspective. That Working Group identified the incorporation of some pandemic-induced changes into future teaching practices. In this Working Group, we explore existing literature regarding the student experience in response to the evolving teaching practices catalyzed by COVID-19). Traditionally, computing is a subject full of experiential learning opportunities, rich with in-person labs and exercises. We explore how the changes within the COVID-affected academic landscape have altered that student experience. The current group of computing students will have had experiences under both typical (i.e. pre-pandemic) and COVID-affected teaching practices. It is, therefore, timely that we understand how each has impacted how they perceive their learning environment and educational experience. In turn, identifying those practices that have most benefited the student learning experience will help computing faculty improve their practices going forward.

We report results of a study of student experiences (anonymous survey: n=90, interviews: n=4) in a fully online, synchronous CS1 class taught during the COVID-19 pandemic. Half the class sessions were held in Zoom and half were held in Gather.Town, an online platform that supports proximity chat and spatially designated private spaces. Students expressed strong preferences for the Gather.Town class setting due to its support for peer socializing, sense of place, agency, engagement, and fluid interactions.

Helping students learn to identify and respond to situations involving discrimination is important, especially in fields like Computer Science where there is evidence of an unwelcoming climate that disproportionately drives underrepresented students out of the field. While students should not be considered responsible for fixing issues around discrimination in their institutions, they do have a role to play. In this paper, we present the results of a study in which 318 undergraduate computer science majors were presented with scenarios of discrimination and asked to identify the issues, rate the severity of the issues, and ideate 3–5 responses to address the described situations. They were also asked to identify which of their responses would likely be most effective in addressing discrimination and which of their responses they would be most likely to use if they were in the situation described in real life. Our results show that while students generally are able to identify various forms of discrimination (sexism, racism, religious discrimination, ethnic discrimination, etc.), any ambiguity in a scenario led to students describing the scenario as less severe and/or as an example of oversensitivity. We also show that students come up with many passive responses to scenarios of discrimination (such as ignoring the situation or wishing it had not happened in the first place). Students in our study were more likely to say they would deploy passive responses in real life, shying away from responses that involve direct confrontation. We observed some differences between student demographic subgroups. Women and BIPOC students in CS tend to think these issues are more severe than men and White and Asian students in CS. Women are more likely to ideate direct confrontation responses and report willingness to use direct confrontation responses in real situations. Our work contributes a methodology for examining student awareness and understanding of diversity issues as well as a demonstration that undergraduate computer science students need help in learning how to address common situations that involve either intentional or unintentional discrimination in an academic environment.

We present BezelGlide, a novel suite of bezel interaction techniques, designed to minimize screen occlusion and ‘fat finger’ effects, when interacting with common graphs on smartwatches. To explore the design of BezelGlide, we conducted two user studies. First, we quantified the amount of screen occlusion experienced when interacting with the smartwatch bezel. Next, we designed two techniques that involve gliding the finger along the smartwatch bezel for graph interaction. Full BezelGlide (FBG) and Partial BezelGlide (PBG), use the full or a portion of the bezel, respectively, to reduce screen occlusion while scanning a line chart for data. In the common value detection task, we find that PBG outperforms FBG and Shift, a touchscreen occlusion-free technique, both quantitatively and subjectively, also while mobile. We finally illustrate the generzability potential of PBG to interact with common graph types making it a valuable interaction technique for smartwatch users.

While makerspaces are often discussed in terms of a utopian vision of democratization and empowerment, many have shown how these narratives are problematic. There remains optimism for the future of makerspaces, but there is a gap in knowledge of how to articulate their promise and how to pursue it. We present a reflexive and critical reflection of our efforts as leaders of a university makerspace to articulate a vision, as well as our experience running a maker fashion show that aimed to address some specific critiques. We analyze interviews of participants from the fashion show using feminist utopianism as a lens to help us understand an alternate utopian narrative for making. Our contributions include insights about how a particular making context embodies feminist utopianism, insights about the applicability of feminist utopianism to makerspace research and visioning efforts, and a discussion about how our results can guide makerspace leaders and HCI researchers.

The coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic has forced an unprecedented global shift within higher education in the ways that we communicate with and educate students. This necessary paradigm shift has compelled educators to take a critical look at their teaching styles and use of technology. Computing education traditionally focuses on experiential, in-person activities. The pandemic has mandated that educators reconsider their use of student time and has catalysed overnight innovations in the educational setting. Even in the unlikely event that we return entirely to pre-COVID-19 norms, many new practices have emerged that offer valuable lessons to be carried forward into our post-COVID-19 teaching. This working group will explore what the post-COVID-19 academic landscape might look like, and how we can use lessons learned during this educational shift to improve our subsequent practice. The exploration will strive to identify practices within computing that appear to have been improved through exposure to online tools and technologies, and that should therefore continue to be used in the online space. In the broadest sense, our motivation is to explore what the post-COVID-19 educational landscape will look like for computing education.

This poster describes the creation of an online active learning classroom to support team-based learning practices in Gather.Town. The classroom serves as a community space, with a layout that supports cross-team interactions through spatialized video conferencing.

We describe an application aimed at helping instructors use team-based active learning techniques even when they are teaching in lecture hall style classrooms or online.

Recent work investigated the potential of comics to support the teaching and learning of programming concepts and suggested several ways coding strips, a form of comic strip with its corresponding code, can be used. Building on this work, we tested the recommended use cases of coding strip in an undergraduate introductory computer science course at a large comprehensive university. At the end of the course, we surveyed students to assess their experience and found they benefited in various ways. Our work contributes a demonstration of the various ways comics can be used in introductory CS courses and an initial understanding of benefits and challenges with using comics in computing education gleaned from an analysis of students' survey responses and code submissions.

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.

Micro-aggressions, hostile climates, and intersectional discrimination contribute to students feeling excluded from fully participating in Computer Science or other STEM programs. To address this exclusion, students need to empathize with each other, and for that we need them to be having frank, open conversations about difficult situations. This is hard to achieve, as people do not typically want to talk about difficult situations with strangers. Computer Science faculty may shy away from these difficult conversations, as they may feel they lack the expertise to address social issues effectively. To address this issue, we have been conducting 'Exclusion Response Workshops' based on the 'Theatre of the Oppressed' methodology of rehearsing social change. This involves students anonymously contributing scenarios of micro-aggressions they have experienced or witnessed and then roleplaying alternate outcomes. These workshops create an empathetic environment for frank and open discussion of difficult issues. We have been scaling this effort by conducting workshops with all freshmen and transfer students in our College of Computing and Informatics. In this SIGCSE workshop, attendees will participate in an Exclusion Response Workshop, then have an open discussion about the workshop experience, workshop logistics, and pros and cons of running this workshop as a mandatory class activity versus a voluntary activity. Participants will learn about the workshop structure, and the Theatre of the Oppressed methodology. This workshop is a taste of a 3-day, train-the-trainer workshop that we will be conducting at our institution in May 2020. Supported by NSF IUSE/RED Award #151960.

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.

This innovative practice work-in-progress paper presents measurement and analysis of a comprehensive model of pedagogical change in the computing college of a large, urban university in the United States. Our approach to change has two major thrusts: (1) a model for systemic change in the culture and climate of computing education, and (2) pedagogical patterns that transform students who enter undergraduate computing programs from people with an interest in computing to people who identify as computing professionals. We collected a total of 940 student survey responses across four semesters. Survey items gauged students’ connection to their peers and their profession and were used to create a composite measure of peer learning and professional identity. Exploratory Factor Analysis indicates an internally consistent factor structure composed of 18 items with a Cronbach’s alpha of 0.91. In this paper, we present the methodology for measurement and analysis, describe our rationale in an engaged computing education context, and discuss how studying the constructs of peer learning and professional identity contributes to the knowledge base of the computing education community.

Ibram X. Kendi, in his book Stamped from the Beginning, lays out the argument that structures (political, economic) drive inequitable systems, and it is our enculturation in those systems that lead to ignorance and bigotry. Our goal, in this BOF, is to discuss the dominant social, political, and curricular structures of the discipline of computing, and how we might strengthen or challenge those structures to increase access, equity, and justice within computing. To do so, we must confront the manifold ways in which the existing structures and practices of computing are exclusionary, from curricula to epistemology and the expressions of identity that typically represent what it means to be (and be recognized as) a computer scientist.

Maker culture has been increasingly pervasive in a variety of communities and contexts, in particular devoted spaces such as Makerspaces, Hackerspaces and Fab Labs. Several people, however, have pointed out that while one of the values of these spaces is radical inclusion, the general Maker culture can be exclusive to some based on gender, race, and socioeconomic status. With the goal of disrupting existing Maker culture by developing, diversifying, and empowering our own university Maker community, we created a semi-structured making experience that we call Statement Making. Statement Making is a Maker Fashion show that we invited anyone from the community to participate in by "making a statement" for them or a friend to wear in a runway show. We report outcomes and experiences of those who participated. We then discuss the key aspects of the event, especially surrounding its performative aspect, using design principles of Feminist HCI to argue that events with similar aspects might also be successful at disrupting existing culture.

This Research-to-Practice Work-in-Progress Paper presents a midway report on a change initiative underway in the College of Computing and Informatics (CCI) at UNC Charlotte. Comprised of approximately 100 faculty members and nearing 2,000 undergraduate majors, CCI was awarded a 5-year, $2 million grant from the National Science Foundation in 2015 to revolutionize computer science education at the collegiate level. This initiative, which seeks to simultaneously achieve both pedagogical and organizational change, is built upon a foundation of educational innovation through engaged teaching practices. To sustain educational innovation in CCI beyond the funded scope of the project, pedagogical change is thus strategically embedded in CCI's organizational structure through a 3-stage model of faculty adoption, redesigned student course evaluations, and realigned values in the reappointment, promotion, and tenure process. By recognizing that sustained organizational change takes root when there is concurrent buy-in from organizational members—both bottom-up and top-down— this reform initiative seeks to embed two-pronged change not only via educational innovation (pedagogical change), but also in the day-to-day practices, policies, and physical environment of the College itself (organizational change).

This paper presents the evolution of a curricular design over four semesters with the intention of improving learning for all while increasing retention and equity in a fully flipped, team-based data structures class. Using peer instruction, lightweight teams, an automated grader, TA-mentorship, and pair programming labs, we create an inclusive, equity-driven peer learning environment. We describe our holistic and iterative course design, reports and analysis of student background and performance, results from anonymous student surveys, and future plans for further improving the inclusive success in computing courses.

We present results of a college wide undergraduate retention study tracking student retention in computing, comparing students who experience a flipped, active learning version of CS1 against those who experience a traditional lecture and lab version of CS1. We examine demographic subgroups to understand retention differences between sexes and racial/ethnic groups. Specifically, we examine which students exit computing majors in the semester immediately after taking CS1, and those who leave following one academic year. This allows us to focus on how the immediate experience of the CS1 teaching approach impacts desire to continue in computer science during the critical first year in CS. Our dataset includes 698 CS majors who took CS1 in either the flipped or traditional style, between Fall 2013 and Fall 2016, at a large, comprehensive, urban research university in the US. Our results show that women were less likely to switch majors after taking the flipped version than after taking the traditional version. Conversely, male students were more likely to be retained following the traditional course, and less likely to be retained following the flipped course. Performance of CS majors in CS1, as measured by DFW rates, is statistically higher in the flipped classes than performance in the traditional classes. One-year retention in the major for under-represented groups (women and racial minorities) was higher in the flipped classes for new freshmen taking CS1, but not for transfer students.

We present an exploration into the use of dimensional reasoning and the creation of research design spaces. We hypothesized that researchers, engaged in open-ended creative problem solving, could adapt the methods of design thinking and design spaces to create dimensionalized research design spaces. To investigate how researchers might explicitly engage in such dimensionalization processes, we created and studied (n=5, n=5) an interactive web-based system for the creation of research design spaces. Our results showed that a 'dimensions-first' approach was difficult for researchers to work with. We then created and studied (n=11) a prototype 'examples-first' approach. Our results suggest that the ability of researchers to explicitly dimensionalize their research areas is quite varied and that significant scaffolding is required to help researchers reason in this way.

The Connected Learner is a re-orientation of undergraduate computing education that focuses on connecting students to peers, the profession, and purpose. The College of Computing and Informatics at UNC Charlotte—comprised of three departments with an undergraduate enrollment of approximately 1,500 students—is a large research institution in an urban setting with a diverse student population. Within this unique context, the project aim is to build a sustainable practice of educational innovation across the undergraduate computing curriculum by increasing faculty awareness of teaching innovations, resources for pedagogical change, and support for teaching practices that engage students. The vision is to create an active learning environment that transforms the student entering the computing undergraduate program from a person with an interest in computing to a person with an affinity identity [1] as a computing professional through these ongoing connections. We employ a systems theory of change for the Connected Learner based on two foundational concepts: flipped classrooms and engagement theory. To achieve related goals of improving student retention and time to graduation, Connected Learner teaching strategies are being integrated across the undergraduate curriculum with an initial focus on introductory gateway courses. Change is occurring via infrastructure supports to sustain learning practices across our college through faculty development initiatives (hiring, training, mentoring, and incentives) that are designed to inform faculty about engagement pedagogies, motivate faculty to adopt these practices, and shift pedagogical attitudes. During the first year of the five-year project, quantitative and qualitative data from students and faculty was collected and analyzed. This data provides a baseline of student attitudes and performance as well as a baseline of faculty attitudes and teaching practices. In this paper, we present the background, context, organizational structure, and research questions for the project. Findings from Year 1 are discussed, including academic outcomes, project milestones, and student attitudes towards new teaching practices. Long-term project goals and expectations are presented.

Active learning is becoming increasingly popular as a way to engage students and to provide social support. Providing social support is important because it has been shown to improve both student retention (Slavin 1990, Tinto 1987, Wenger 1999) and performance (Hsiung 2012, Kulkarni 2015, MacNeil 2015). Most forms of active learning use a flipped classroom model of teaching where students are expected to interact with materials, such as lecture videos, alone before class and then engage in active learning during class time (Lage 2000). In our previous work with team-based learning, students generally preferred learning in face-to-face teams (MacNeil 2016). To support co-located teams outside of class, we propose the design for a mobile app that is currently in development which uses students' location to form ad-hoc social learning opportunities for students that are located near each other. We take inspiration from flash teams, which create dynamic expert teams based on the availability of experts online (Retelny 2014). Our app will create teams based on the availability of students and their range of expertise, while leveraging additional context, such as student's location and intention. Students upload course topics that they are struggling with and a general geo-location. The app opportunistically pairs students and suggests that they arrange to meet based on either a geo-location match, a topic match, or preferably, both. In designing our prototype, we consider the possibility of suggesting exercises or assignments that students could work on together. Finally, we provide a brief discussion of the theoretical opportunities and challenges associated with using student's location for ad-hoc social learning.

In both flipped classroom settings and distance learning, educational content is typically delivered via video lectures that students watch alone. While flipped classrooms typically provide students with opportunities for social interaction that feature active learning, online learners are not typically afforded these opportunities. Cooperative learning techniques like Lightweight Teams provide social, collaborative learning opportunities to students in flipped classrooms but extending these techniques to distance learning settings is not straightforward. In this paper, we present our experiences with online, distributed Lightweight Teams. We present an in-the-wild study that compares learning outcomes and student preferences between co-located and distributed Lightweight Teams against the base case of individual learning. Our results show that while there are no significant learning differences between the two team conditions and the individual condition, students significantly prefer the team conditions.

We are developing ways to teach computational thinking through interaction with tangible digital tools for synthetic biology. Inspired in part by Jeannette Wing's (Wing 2008) notion of the essence and pervasiveness of computational thinking, a growing community within SIGCSE is exploring tools that encourage computational thinking that don't use traditional computer science terminology or computer programming (Basawapna 2013, Daily 2014, Freeman 2014, Miller 2014, Wolz 2011). However, that community has not yet explored how to teach computational thinking through bio-design. Synthetic biology is a relatively new research field where scientists engineer living organisms to exhibit new behaviors. Biologists arrange and combine BioBricks, sequences of DNA that exhibit a behavior, sense an environmental factor, or indicate the beginning or end of a larger sequence. Bio-design not only incorporates traditional principles of computational thinking (abstraction, modularity, design/build/test), but also introduces new challenges that force the user to apply these principles in new ways. Interacting with biology can thus 1) help deepen understanding for people who are proficient in computational thinking, 2) provide a platform for introduction to computational thinking for the first time. Because most bio-design is performed in a wetlab by experienced biologists, we focus now on designing and developing low-barrier digital tools for interacting with biology. We present SynFlo (Okerlund 2016), a tangible interactive system for bio-design that mimics a real-life biological wetlab protocol and we discuss the properties of SynFlo and bio-design in general that encourage computational thinking.

Video usage in educational environments has increased significantly with the expansion of online learning opportunities. However, current video-based applications used for learning are designed for passive consumption of video content and do not support small-group collaboration. Specifically, they lack interaction affordances for active and collaborative learning through video materials. In this paper, we present the affordances and user experience of a web-based video application called Video Collaboratory that is designed with multiple affordances for group-based learning around video content. We surveyed students and analyzed the use of the Video Collaboratory in an HCI course. Students found the Video Collaboratory helpful because they could learn from their peers. Students also used the application beyond the activities required for credit.

This paper describes the results of an interview study investigating facilitators and barriers to adoption of patient portals among low-income, older adults in rural and urban populations in the southeastern United States. We describe attitudes of this population of older adults and their current level of technology use and patient portal use. From qualitative analysis of 36 patient interviews and 16 caregiver interviews within these communities, we derive themes related to benefits of portals, barriers to use, concerns and desired features. Based on our initial findings, we present a set of considerations for designing the patient portal user experience, aimed at helping healthcare clinics to meet U.S. federally-mandated 'meaningful use' requirements.

Active learning is important in computer science education, where students often don't have enough opportunities for social learning and development of soft skills. Flipped classrooms can provide social interaction through approaches such as lightweight teams [23], where students collaborate during class in low-stakes peer learning. These teams scaffold positive interdependence [17] by removing high-stakes assignments that heavily impact student's grades.

We present a new approach to help make computer science classes both more social and more effective: "lightweight teams". Lightweight teams are class teams in which the team members have little or no direct impact on each other's final grades, yet where there is a significant component of peer teaching, peer learning and long-term socialization built into the curriculum. We explain how lightweight teams have been used in a CS1 class at our institution, and how this approach, combined with a flipped class approach and gamification, has led to high levels of student engagement, despite the difficulty of the material and the frustration that is common to those first learning to program.

The basic principles of a flipped classroom teaching method are to deliver content outside of the class and to move active learning into the classroom. There are many strategies for delivering the content online, such as having instructors prepare online lectures, wrapping the course around a MOOC, and curating online videos from various sources. There are also many strategies for including active learning in the classroom that go beyond providing programming labs, and can include various forms of peer instruction. In this paper we describe our experiences flipping four different computer science classes across multiple semesters over two years. This breadth of experience with classroom flipping has enabled us to compare strategies and approaches and develop an understanding of which approaches appear to work under which circumstances. We discuss how we structured out-of-class preparatory work, how we created or sourced online videos, how we used active learning activities in-class to scaffold skills development and identify students' misconceptions, and how we structured teams for in class activities. This paper contributes a set of flexible strategies to consider for provision of curricular content out-of-class, structuring students' preparatory work, applying active learning of skills and concepts, and leveraging social interaction and peer instruction for CS education. We present the impact of our approaches based upon leading indicators of course evaluations and student surveys. We discuss lessons learned and students' responses to our strategies.

In digital music production, the phrase "in the box" refers to the increasing replacement of extraneous hardware devices with compatible software components. As controls move from hard to soft, we have seen an increase in usability issues for musicians and sound engineers dealing with a large number of temporal inputs and both continuous and discrete controls. We present the SonicExplorer application, which we developed to give users a new interface for exploring and manipulating audio. SonicExplorer leverages users' spatial and color perception to enhance exploration by visualizing the parameter space and providing implicit memory cues. The application also leverages bimanual input to aid in fluid exploration of multidimensional audio parameter spaces, and to minimize the need for switching between parameters.

Creativity support tools help people engage creatively with the world, but measuring how well a tool supports creativity is challenging since creativity is ill-defined. To this end, we developed the Creativity Support Index (CSI), which is a psychometric survey designed for evaluating the ability of a creativity support tool to assist a user engaged in creative work. The CSI measures six dimensions of creativity support: Exploration, Expressiveness, Immersion, Enjoyment, Results Worth Effort, and Collaboration. The CSI allows researchers to understand not just how well a tool supports creative work overall, but what aspects of creativity support may need attention. In this article, we present the CSI, along with scenarios for how it can be deployed in a variety of HCI research settings and how the CSI scores can help target design improvements. We also present the iterative, rigorous development and validation process used to create the CSI.

Scientists and technologists conducting research in creativity and engaging with artists face political pressure to justify their work via economic arguments. These arguments often stress how the work can lead to innovation and economic growth. This has the negative side-effect of dismissing the intrinsic value of the arts for society. The implication is that arts and creativity work that does not have economic merit is not valuable and not worthy of public funding. A case study of the NSF-funded Dance.Draw project is used to illustrate these points. I argue that a shift in dialogue is needed to focus more on the qualitative value of this work to society and less on the economic value.

The dance production process is strongly influenced within the physical rehearsal space by social context factors and dynamics, such as intimacy of bodies, gender distribution, and the hierarchy of choreographers and dancers. Introducing online tools for asynchronous collaboration can change the traditional dance production process and impact the social dynamics of the group. We developed and deployed the Choreographer's Notebook, a web-based, collaborative, multi-modal annotation tool used in the creative process of making dance. We collected usage logs and choreographer reflections on the use of this tool, along with conducting interviews and focus groups, from the interdisciplinary perspectives of both technologists and choreographers involved in the project. We describe the socio-technical impacts of the Choreographer's Notebook based on the results of its usage in three dance productions. We analyze these case studies through various contextual lenses and provide a visualization of how the choreographic correction process evolved.

We present a first attempt at capturing 'in the moment' creativity (ITMC) through a triangulation self-report techniques, external judges, and physiological measures. In our study, participants were asked to sketch for 30 minutes while wearing GSR and EEG; then they retrospectively self-reported their creativity using a custom interface. External judges were also utilized to rate when participants were creative. Our initial results indicate high reliability for self-reporting ITMC, consensus between judges and participants, and that physiological measures trended according to the expectations from research. Our work sets the stage for more extensive research that makes use of temporal measures of creativity.

SoundPainter is an interactive dance performance that fea- tures a triad of dancers, musicians and projected visuals, where each of these three elements reacts to one another through improvisation, algorithmic representations of sound and vision-based technology.

Interdisciplinary projects bridging technology and the arts face challenges across many dimensions. In this paper, we reflect on the issue of temporal constraints on integrations of interactive technology within dance production. We describe lessons learned and illustrate practical impacts on stakeholders, creative process and outcomes from over three years of experience in developing dance productions at our university. Specifically, we reflect on perceptions of how the timing of the technology integrations impacted the creativity of the stakeholders involved. We separate results that are idiosyncratic to our project and highlight those that we expect are more generally applicable to other art and technology projects. Finally, we provide a set of temporal integration considerations that others can use to assess when it is best to integrate technology into an arts project.

We present a collaborative tool for choreographers and dancers, the Choreographer's Notebook, which allows multimodal annotation of rehearsal videos during the dance production process. The dance production process is a creative process in which exploration and expression are paramount and we describe issues we have observed over four different dance production cycles. The Choreographer's Notebook addresses the recurring problem of scarcity of rehearsal time and space, which is a limiting factor for exploration and expression. The tool is a web-based video application that enables choreographers to provide multimodal, context-sensitive instructions and feedback to the dancers outside of formal rehearsal time. The novelty of this tool is its ability to provide a multimodal collaborative video-based workflow. This article also presents a thorough ethnographic investigation of the dance production process and results from the use of the Choreographer's Notebook as an artifact within that process.

The integration of interactive technology with temporal art such as dance is an exciting, emerging area. The design space for such collaborations is immense, with variations in sensors, visualizations, and how these interact with dancers and choreography. This paper presents the evaluation methodology and results of Dance.Draw, a longitudinal project spanning two years and three productions, which aimed to develop a deep, interdisciplinary understanding of this space. Given that this is pioneering work, there is little guidance on how to evaluate such collaborations. We describe the significant confounds in doing evaluation in this area, and we present our evolving mixed-methods approach, which includes two unique methods to address the multiple stakeholders in a holistic manner: dancer focus groups and repeated presentations. Our approach has generated insights, such as differing perspectives of audience members and the responses of dancers to technological variables. We conclude by discussing the challenges and successes of our evaluation approach.

Understanding audience responses to art and performance is a challenge. New sensors are promising for measurement of implicit and explicit audience engagement. However, the meaning of biometric data, and its relationship to engagement, is unclear. We conceptually explore the audience engagement domain to uncover opportunities and challenges in the assessment and interpretation of audience engagement data. We developed a display that linked performance videos with audience biometric data and presented it to 7 performing arts experts, to explore the measurement, interpretation and application of biometric data. Experts were intrigued by the response data and reflective in interpreting it. We deepened our inquiry with an empirical study with 49 participants who watched a video of a dance performance. We related temporal galvanic skin response (GSR) data to two self-report scales, which provided insights on interpreting this measure. Our findings, which include strong correlations, support the interpretation of GSR as a valid representation of audience engagement.

We present a new survey metric, the Creativity Support Index (CSI) that is designed to help researchers and designers evaluate the level of creativity support provided by various systems or interfaces. We initially employed a top-down literature-based approach to develop a beta version of the Creativity Support Index (Beta CSI). We discuss our usage of the Beta CSI in three different studies and what we learned from those deployments. We also present the results from an extensive creativity vocabulary study (n=300), which revealed a set of orthogonal creativity factors. This led to the current version of the CSI presented in this paper. Initial results from these formative evaluations suggest the value of this tool in assessing and comparing creativity support tools at points in time and longitudinally.

We present two versions of the ToneZone tool, which allows users to explore image tone ranges. The original ToneZone tool is a dual-mouse, dual-cursor tool, while a modified version requires only a single mouse and cursor. Both tools are designed to encourage non-experts to explore the powerful interaction of tone range manipulation.

This paper introduces kinematic templates, an end-user tool for defining content-specific motor space manipulations in the context of editing 2D visual compositions. As an example, a user can choose the "sandpaper" template to define areas within a drawing where cursor movement should slow down. Our current implementation provides templates that amplify or dampen the cursor's speed, attenuate jitter in a user's movement, guide movement along paths, and add forces to the cursor. Multiple kinematic templates can be defined within a document, with overlapping templates resulting in a form of function composition. A template's strength can also be varied, enabling one to improve one's strokes without losing the human element. Since kinematic templates guide movements, rather than strictly prescribe them, they constitute a visual composition aid that lies between unaided freehand drawing and rigid drawing aids such as snapping guides, masks, and perfect geometric primitives.

We introduce symSpline: a symmetric, dual-mouse technique for the manipulation of spline curves. In symSpline, two cursors control the positions of the ends of the tangent to an edit point. By moving the tangent with both mice, the tangent and the edit point can be translated while the curvature of the spline is adjusted simultaneously, according to the length and angle of the tangent. We compare the symSpline technique to two asymmetric dual-mouse spline manipulation techniques and to a standard single-mouse technique. In a spline matching experiment, symSpline outperformed the two asymmetric dual-mouse techniques and all three dual-mouse techniques proved to be faster than the single-mouse technique. Additionally, symSpline was the technique most preferred by test participants.

We present an evaluation of three mouse-based techniques for aligning digital images. We investigate the physical image alignment task and discuss the implications for interacting with virtual images. In a formal evaluation we show that a symmetric bimanual technique outperforms an asymmetric bimanual technique which in turn outperforms a unimanual technique. We show that even after mode switching times are removed, the symmetric technique outperforms the single mouse technique. Subjects also exhibited more parallel interaction using the symmetric technique than when using the asymmetric technique.

Declining female enrollment in undergraduate Computer Science programs is a serious problem. Part of the solution lies in retaining more of the female students currently enrolled; even more important, however, is increasing initial enrollment. Many believe lack of interest to be rooted in stereotypes of computer science formed early in high school: that it is a boring subject, devoid of interesting applications and stimulating only to 'geeks'. To attract high school females to CS, and to determine whether early exposure to the interesting breadth of CS and its applications might ameliorate such attitudes, a week-long Computer Science Seminar for Grade 9 and 10 girls was held at the University of Waterloo. The seminar consisted of lectures, labs and activities chosen to demonstrate the breadth of CS and to dispel the negative stereotypes. Pre- and post-seminar surveys indicate a substantial increase in interest, translating directly into increased desire to take high school CS courses.