Executable exams assessments where students write code in development environments using computers with digital validation, offer a format more aligned with actual programming practice than traditional paper-based methods. Our previous work established a comprehensive taxonomy characterizing executable exam aspects including timing, feedback mechanisms, submission policies, resources, proctoring, and grading. However, the emergence of powerful generative AI tools like ChatGPT and GitHub Copilot has fundamentally transformed programming education and assessment. These tools can generate complete solutions, explain code, provide debugging assistance, and offer alternative approaches based on natural language descriptions capabilities that directly challenge traditional executable exam designs. Studies demonstrate that large language models correctly solve most introductory programming problems, making conventional assessment methods particularly vulnerable. This work revisits our original taxonomy through the lens of generative AI, examining how each characteristic must adapt to this new reality. We introduce two critical new characteristics: generative AI tool usage (spanning unrestricted, limited, filtered, and restricted approaches) and problem design in the generative AI era (encompassing AI-resistant, AI-accepting, and AI-cooperative question types). Two case studies illustrate practical implementations: a hybrid course maintaining no-AI policies with minimal changes, and an on-campus course adopting AI-resistant problem design. Survey data from CS educators reveal that while most prohibit generative AI during exams, they embrace it for pedagogical purposes. This updated taxonomy provides educators with frameworks to maintain assessment validity while acknowledging the transformative impact of AI on programming education.

GenAI is playing an increasingly important role in computing courses at all levels, offering new opportunities to support teaching and learning. However, using GenAI effectively raises important concerns regarding trust, academic integrity, and broader social and ethical dimensions. This Working Group was formed to report on the current state of the art in using GenAI in upper-level computing courses to aid educators. The working group will undertake a methodological review of published work and solicit input from the computing educational community as part of the report.

Recent advancements in large language model-based generative artificial intelligence (GenAI) tools have transformed computer science education, presenting both opportunities and challenges. A study investigating students' attitudes toward these tools was conducted during an Introduction to Computer Science course. The target of the study was to gauge students' evolving attitudes toward using GenAI tools in the course, before, during and after ChatGPT was gradually assimilated into homework assignments. The study refers to three phases: preliminary phase, assimilation phase, and calibration stage, which currently takes place. Findings show that, in the preliminary phase, students appreciated the efficiency of GenAI tools offered but were concerned about developing a dependency on these tools and about ''cheating''. Findings from the assimilation phase indicate that consistent, guided exposure to GenAI tools positively shifted students' views, alleviating initial concerns and promoting a positive attitude toward using GenAI tools in the course. The targets of the calibration phase are: a) to examine how to leverage independent learning by formulating clear guidelines that can build trust in the technology and help overcome concerns regarding reliability and credibility; b) to check how GenAI can help students in a Introduction to Computer Science course acquire skills such as critical thinking and code comprehension. The study offers insights for educators on the integration of GenAI tools into computer science courses to enhance learning while maintaining academic integrity.

Generative AI has the potential to become disruptive technology for computer science education. Therefore, computer science educators must be familiar with the threats they should deal with and with the opportunities that generative-AI opens for the computer science education community. In the workshop, we explore the integration of several generative-AI tools and applications in computer science education. Activities include lesson design, code development, test design and assessment. We address the students' and the educators' perspectives. In addition, we explore computer science practices and soft skills to be applied with these tools as well as immediate and future applications and implications for computer science education and for the society. AT the end of the workshop, the participants will be able to use these generative AI tools in their daily educational computer science activities and beyond.

Traditionally exams in introductory programming courses have tended to be multiple choice, or "paper-based" coding exams in which students hand write code. This does not reflect how students typically write and are assessed on programming assignments in which they write code on a computer and are able to validate and assess their code using an auto-grading system.

The objective of interdisciplinary education is to teach multiple domains, so that the students can solve integrative problems that require knowledge and skills from these domains. Interdisciplinary programs, in which computer science is combined with other domains, range from bioinformatics to computational linguistics and data science. Data science is an interdisciplinary field that integrates computer science, mathematics, statistics, and the domain knowledge of the data involved. It is a relevant research skill for many disciplines, including social sciences. Specifically, graduate psychology students who wish to learn data science have already mastered the psychology domain knowledge and their statistics background is advanced. They lack, however, the computer science knowledge required for meaningfully handling data science. The problem is, however, that there is no CS1 course that fits graduate psychology students who study data science: On the one hand, the current CS1 courses do not suit social science students; on the other hand, CS1 courses for non-majors usually do not meet the required level of computer science needed for data science. Accordingly, to close this gap, we designed a new CS1 course – an interdisciplinary Introduction to Computer Science for Psychological Science course – that a) suits social science students and b) meets the required computer science level for data science. We evaluated the course by examining students’ learning outcomes, reflections, and responses on questionnaires. Based on the data analysis according to the self-determination motivation theory, it is concluded that the course design enabled to achieve the course’s targets.

This lightning talk presents insights from preliminary research on attitudes toward executable exams in an Introduction to Computer Science (CS1) course. In an executable exam, during the exam, students work on a computer in a designated programming environment that enables them to compile their code and run unit tests. Although this exam format is authentic and resembles the way students work during their studies and in the industry, it is not a popular format. We implemented executable exams in the 2021 Winter semester final exam and explored the attitudes toward executable exams of three main groups - students, course staff, and industry representatives. In addition, we collected and analyzed data from high school CS teachers, CS and EE students from other academic institutions and CS lecturers around the world. The attitudes are categorized into three aspects: pedagogical, technical and psychological. All groups expressed concerns regarding technical problems related to computer malfunction and plagiarism. In addition, the course staff and the students expressed concern about the change in the exam format. The groups' attitudes are supported by the pedagogical advantages and disadvantages of executable exams they pointed out.

Gender imbalance in STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics) studies and occupations is a well-known phenomenon with a large body of research that tries to explain it and offer remedial interventions. Data science is a new and interdisciplinary STEM-oriented domain, integrating knowledge and skills from computer science, mathematics, and statistics with an application domain, from which the data draw their context and meaning. Data science applications are relevant for various domains, and therefore, a variety of populations are increasingly attracted to learning it. Addressing the theme of the conference, i.e., “Women in Engineering”, in this paper we describe a data science workshop for social sciences and digital humanities researchers. A significant majority (83%) of the participants of this workshop self-identified as women. This gender proportion, the opposite of that prevailing in STEM studies, led us to examine the workshop from a gender perspective. Our results indicate that the women participating in the data science workshop perceived it as an opportunity to acquire research tools rather than programming tools. We suggest that framing the workshop as a research tool workshop and not as a programming workshop reduced prevalent gender barriers in STEM, encouraging a majority of women researchers to participate. In this paper, we elaborate on the participants' perceptions about data science and programming and analyze them based on three theoretical perspectives: expectancy value theory, the interdisciplinary perspective, and the epistemological perspective. Keywords-data science, data science education, gender balance, interdisciplinary of data science.

Data science in an emerging interdisciplinary field integrating knowledge and skills from computer science, statistics, and an application domain. The contribution of computer science education to the field of data science education is therefore evident. As computer science educators, however, we can benefit from adapting concepts and methods of data science education as well. For example, working with real data sets, a common practice in data science education, can benefit computer science students, giving them better sense of real-life problems; Statistical thinking, a fundamental thinking skill for data scientists, can enhance computational thinking as a real-life problem-solving skill. This BOF will provide a platform to discuss both the possible benefits computer science educators can earn from the emerging field of data science education and practical pedagogical methods to achieve these benefits.

This experience report focuses on the community of Israeli high school computer science (CS) teachers during the corona pandemic. Like most educational systems worldwide, which were suddenly shut down during the outbreak of the corona pandemic, the Israeli education system was closed from March 12, 2020 until the end of the school year. However, since the national CS matriculation exam was scheduled for June 24, 2020, and since not all teachers finished teaching all of the required material and preparing their pupils for the exam, the Central CS Supervisory Unit, at the Ministry of Education, launched the CS-orona initiative whose purpose was to support teachers and pupils in their preparation for the matriculation exam. The initiative was implemented mainly (but not only) through Zoom presentations by volunteer teachers, who presented lessons to their colleagues and to pupils located throughout Israel.

Interdisciplinary perspective on real-life problems is an important skill for 21st century engineers and should be a part of their education. Project-based learning (PBL) is a well-known pedagogical tool for interdisciplinary education. In order to successfully accomplish interdisciplinary learning, students must have sufficient knowledge in each of the separate disciplines. Use of cross-disciplinary teams, for example, is one way to make sure a project team includes specialists in all required disciplines. This, however, is not always the case. In many cases, there are significant knowledge gaps within the project team in one or more of the project domains. Specifically, in our case, fourth-year electrical engineering students are working in pairs on biomedical signal processing projects, which are evidently interdisciplinary in nature. The teams, however, are homogeneous and the students lack the essential medical expertise required to achieve solutions applicable by physicians. Furthermore, students tend to acknowledge this gap only in the advanced phases of the project, and so critical phases, such as goal setting and planning, are performed without the required knowledge. In this article, we present (a) data that supports the existence of this knowledge gap and its effect on students; (b) an intervention program that exposes students to both the required domain knowledge and its importance to their work; and (c) initial data that supports the success of this intervention program in bridging these gaps.

In the industry, the Dual Career Ladder allows employees to be promoted along either a supervisory or technical track. Such programs are common in the engineering, scientific and medical industries. In the Lightning Talk, I will borrow the metaphor of Dual Ladder and explore two kinds of experience -- academic and industrial experience -- that undergraduate computer science students can be offered to equip them with the needed tools for the future job market. Specifically, I will address the questions: What kind of real world experience should undergraduate students in computer science get and how? How should answers to this question be expressed in the computer science undergraduate programs? My talk will focus on the case of Israel -- the Start Up Nation (Senor and Singer, 2009) -- and the crucial role of computer science graduates in this job market. Data will be presented from the Technion -- Israel Institute of Technology, which is the ranked 1st among the Israeli universities. I will share our findings and data analysis, and propose possible ways to let students get both an academic and industrial experience in a way that prepare them both for academic and industrial careers.

This workshop addresses the teaching of computer science soft skills, such as teamwork, diversity, presentation and communication skills, and ethical behaviors. It is based on the assumption that the people involved in software development processes deserve more attention, and therefore, their soft skills should also be addressed, beyond their scientific and engineering skills. In the workshop, we will highlight such soft skills using activities that aim to analyze them from a social and cognitive perspective. We will also present and discuss a course outline dealing with soft skills of computer science, including suggestions for specific activities and tasks.

Recent years have seen the emergence of applications and concepts that rely on the involvement of the general public (the "crowd") and, consequently, create big data (e.g., MOOCs, search engines, crowdsourcing, crowdfunding, citizen/crowd science, and more). Education in particular is changing dramatically with the use of online resources and courses that generate large streams of data. In this special session, we ask: What research questions in computer science education can be explored using big data? And how can computer science education researchers apply big data analysis to support education in other disciplines? To answer these and related questions, we focus in this special interactive session on how computer science education research can be promoted by integrating big data into the research process.

This paper continues a previous paper [1] in which we described students' gradual understanding of computer science (CS) and software engineering (SE) soft skills. Our study focused on a course we taught on soft skills in CS and SE, offered by the Department of Computer Science at the Technion -- Israel Institute of Technology. The course was developed in response to a call by the Israeli hi-tech industry to equip Technion CS graduates with such skills. In [1] we presented the nature of CS soft skills, described the course schedule, including the teaching principles applied in the course, and showed how, in the course of the course, students gradually constructed a mental perception of CS soft skills in a 4-stage process. In this paper, we refine the comprehension process into a 6-rung ladder, based on further data analysis and additional experience gained when teaching the course for a second time. We elaborate on the additional rungs and further illuminate the results of two evaluation surveys on the course that were distributed to the students (in addition to the formal course evaluation administrated by the Technion's Center for the Promotion of Teaching). One of our main conclusions is that the course provides students with the opportunity to express their desire to be more involved in the teaching process of the course and to discuss and analyze their own soft skills. In other words, students realize the importance and significance of learning soft skills by actually implementing these skills in the learning process. In the Summary part of the paper, we present several pedagogical conclusions that are based on this observation and that we intend to implement in the future when teaching this course.

The conference theme - "Leveraging Computing to Change Education" - focuses on the influence of computing on the way we educate at all levels. In this paper we highlight the conference theme from the perspective of computer science (CS) teacher preparation and describe the Views program, launched at the Technion -- Israel Institute of Technology, two year ago. Views invites Technion graduates back to the Technion to study toward an additional bachelor's degree in the Department of Education in Science and Technology. The degree they earn includes a high school teaching certificate in one of eight tracks: math, physics, biology, chemistry, CS, environmental sciences, electrical engineering, and mechanical engineering. Views students receive full study scholarships and are not required to commit to work in the education system after graduation. In the paper, we (a) present the Views program; (b) analyze factors that motivate and demotivate CS graduates to enroll in the program; (c) describe the characteristics of students in the program and their contribution to the learning environments and (d) address hopes with respect to the expected future impact of the Views program on the education system in Israel in general and on CS education in particular.

In this paper, we describe a course on computer science and software engineering soft skills offered by the Department of Computer Science (CS) at the Technion -- Israel Institute of Technology. The course was developed in response to a call by the Israeli hi-tech industry to equip the Technion's CS graduates with such skills. This request actually reflects the industry's recognition of the importance of soft skills in software development processes, not only on the managerial level, but also among software team members. The paper describes the course and aims to deliver the message that like soft concepts of computer science (e.g., abstraction and readability), which cannot be imparted rigidly using formal definitions, soft skills too cannot be studied and taught formally and, rather, should be learned and grasped gradually over a certain period of time, based on students' engagement, active learning, and reflection. Furthermore, students must accept such soft skills as concepts that can neither be defined formally nor evaluated adequately.

This paper focuses on the development and implementation of computer science (CS) teacher preparation programs, which are two of the main educational and pedagogical challenges faced by those involved in CS education. Specifically, the paper presents the second stage of a study, the first stage of which focused on the accumulative knowledge gained in Israel over the past twenty years on CS teacher preparation. The first stage of the study, presented in SIGCSE 2010, emphasized the obvious: CS deserves designated CS teacher preparation programs. The second stage of the study, presented in this paper, is based on a deeper analysis of the data gathered in the first stage. Specifically, we approached a wider community of CS teacher educators (from Israel, Europe, and the USA) and explored its perspective on one element of teacher preparation programs - the Methods of Teaching CS (MTCS) course. The conclusions from this stage can be viewed as a comprehensive framework for the design of an MTCS course, both in terms of topics to be included in the course as well as the relative weight (in time) that is to be dedicated to each topic.

Socio-professional websites such as LinkedIn use various mechanisms such as network of colleagues, groups and discussions to assist their users in maintaining their professional network and keeping up with relevant discussions. Software professionals post hundreds of thousands of comments each week in these group discussions regarding technological and methodological aspects of their work. Analyzing these comments enables us, the software community at large, to better understand the state of the practice of many aspects of software development. In this paper we describe a case study in which we use such LinkedIn group discussion to learn about developers' perception of using code examples.

In this paper, we present a HOT --- Human, Organizational and Technological --- framework for software engineering and describe its application in a full one-semester software engineering course on agile software development. We suggest and illustrate how this framework has the potential to widen and deepen the students' understanding of software engineering processes.

Our tutorial for ICSE 2010 focuses on coaching agile software teams.

No abstract available.

This paper focuses on the development and implementation of computer science (CS) teacher preparation programs, which are among the educational and pedagogical challenges faced by those involved in the current development of CS. It presents a survey that reflects the accumulative knowledge gained in Israel over the past twenty years with respect to CS teacher preparation. We explored nine institutes (six universities and three teacher education colleges) that offer CS teacher preparation programs. The survey indicates that while the programs vary in their implementation details, they are all motivated by the unique characteristics of CS, which play a central role in their design. We suggest that this observation further emphasizes the obvious: CS deserves designated CS teacher preparation programs. We therefore hope that this survey will contribute to the community of CS educators in general and to practitioners involved in developing CS teacher preparation programs in particular.

This article describes the construction process and evaluation of the Agile Constructionist Mentoring Methodology (ACMM), a mentoring method for guiding software development projects in the high school. The need for such a methodology has arisen due to the complexity of mentoring software project development in the high school. We introduce the ACMM and suggest a year-long mentoring template that includes the practices required for the actual mentoring process. The evaluation of the ACMM reveals that the methodology addresses each of the challenges teachers cope with during the mentoring process, which were identified in the first phase of the research.

The evaluation of an advanced software engineering (SE) course is a challenging task that should be addressed as part of the course design. In this paper, we describe an implementation of the reflective practitioner perspective as part of an advanced SE course and introduce its use for feedback purposes. Reflective feedback goes beyond merely using feedback questionnaires. Furthermore, we show, using both qualitative and quantitative empirical data, that the course on which the perspective was applied meets its objectives and fosters students' awareness to the multidimensional nature of SE.

This special session examines frameworks for the preparation of high school computer science (CS) teachers from the Israeli perspective. Specifically, several Israeli CS teacher preparation programs and their components are presented. The presentation includes both a general overview and a detailed description of the actual implementation of such programs. This bipolar presentation, we suggest, provides practical guidelines with respect to CS teacher preparation, both for policy makers and for faculty members who wish to establish a CS teacher preparation program at their universities.

One of the greatest challenges Computer Science (CS) teachers face is that of guiding their pupils through problem-solving processes, i.e., the process of constructing a solution for a given problem as an algorithm or a computer program. This paper suggests a tutoring model, to be implemented by prospective CS teachers, that aims at training them to accomplish this challenge. The model is based on one-on-one tutoring sessions, in which the prospective teacher meets a novice undergraduate student taking an introductory CS course and guides him or her through problem-solving processes. The tutoring activity provides the prospective CS teachers with an opportunity to experience teaching situations, especially learners' difficulties with respect to problem-solving processes, and consequently, to improve their teaching skills. The tutoring model was integrated into the Methods of Teaching Computer Science course and was accompanied by a qualitative research. The main research findings indicate that the prospective CS teachers: (a) change their perspective with respect to teaching processes; (b) focus in their teaching on learners' difficulties; (c) increase their awareness to problem-solving processes and to the need to adapt different teaching approaches for different learners; (d) become reflective practitioners; and (e) increase their confidence with respect to teaching processes.

This paper presents a model program for high school computer science education. It is based on an analysis of the structure of the Israeli high school computer science curriculum considered to be one of the leading curricula worldwide. The model consists of four key elements as well as interconnections between these elements. It is proposed that such a model be considered and/or adapted when a country wishes to implement a nation-wide program for high school computer science education.

The research presented in this article deals with the difficulties and mental processes involved in the definition, implementation, and use of abstract data types encountered by 12 th grade advanced-level computer science students. Research findings are interpreted within the theoretical framework of reducing abstraction [Hazzan 1999]. The article describes the research setting and findings and concludes with some pedagogical implementations.

Worldwide surveys indicate that the number of women studying undergraduate-level Computer Science is constantly decreasing. Based on data collected in Israel, significant differences were found in the percentages of fale high school students studying advanced-level Computer Science among different sectors. More specifically, while the percentage of fale high school students studying advanced-level Computer Science is about 50% for the Arab minority sector, the percentage of fale students studying Computer Science at the same level among the Jewish majority sector is only about 25%. This situation was investigated by using both qualitative and quantitative research tools. The paper illustrates the analysis of the data within the model of 'achievent-related choices' developed by Eccles and her colleagues.

In this paper we suggest a framework for teaching software development methods (SDMs). Specifically, based on our accumulative research and in-practice experience of teaching SDMs, a set of principles, that guides our teaching of SDMs in different settings and teaching experiences, has been formulated. The teaching framework consists of 14 principles that their actual implementation is varied and adjusted in different teaching environments. This paper outlines the principles and addresses their contribution to learners' understanding of the said software development method.

This workshop explores the concept of abstraction in software engineering at the individual, team and organization level. The aim is to explore the role of abstraction in dealing with complexity in the software engineering process, to discuss how the use of different levels of abstraction may facilitate performance of different activities, and to examine whether or not abstraction skills can be taught.

There are some arguments that suggest women need academic handholding, such as a "female friendly" curriculum, in order for them to participate and be successful in computer science and related fields. Then there are other arguments that suggest we need to change the field to suit women or help women adjust to the field. In this paper we present a different perspective that shows none of these may be necessary. The "Women-CS Fit" is already there! Specifically, under certain cultural and environmental conditions we can see that women fit very well into computing fields and what we have been attributing to gender is actually the result of cultural and environmental conditions. The reasons for women participating in -- or not participating in -- the field of computer science have little to do with gender and a lot to do with culture. In other words, we need to recognize that this is a cultural issue, and an issue that concerns us all. Appropriate local interventions in the micro-culture can have large effect. This argument is illustrated in this paper by three case studies.

This paper discusses the suitability of the qualitative research approach to computer science education research. It is based on the following two observations: First, only a small proportion of works presented in the computer science education literature contain some experimental component (Fincher and Petre, 2004; Valentine, 2004). Second, those research works conducted in computer science education that do, usually employ a quantitative research approach. This paper focuses on the qualitative research approach, presenting its nature, discussing its relationships to the quantitative research approach and addressing its application in general and in the context of computer science education in particular.

A project-based capstone course aims at using software development skills while performing a project in the course domain. One of our main challenges is to simulate a real world environment so to provide our students with the experience they need. Planning this experience we should consider academic constraints as well as the students' schedule and skills. In this paper we describe how we implement an agile software development method in a project-based capstone course in the domain of operating systems. We elaborate on how we simulate a real world environment and present a role scheme that is used by the students to manage the process. We suggest a discussion on how to use the role scheme as an assessment tool to measure the development process in general and students' contribution in particular. We expect to extend and refine the comprehension regarding process measurement in students' teams at the academia.

This paper highlights the teaching of human aspects of software engineering, by presenting a course that deals with this topic. Specifically, this paper outlines the course's objective and structure, and, as the CfP asks, suggests two challenges an instructor of software engineering faces today.

No abstract available.

The study described in this article continues research on gender-related issues in Computer Science education by focusing on the differences between two sectors in the Israeli high school system -- the Jewish sector (majority) and the Arab sector (minority). As it turns out, the under-representation of female high school students in CS studies is significantly more salient in the majority sector. This study explores this situation and attempts to explain it. We also explain how the findings of this research can be applied to other countries and societies.

No abstract available.

We illustrate how reflection is introduced into the teaching and learning of the human aspects of software engineering. We start with explaining the rationale for a reflective mode of thinking and its fitness to the field of software engineering. Then we outline in detail the agenda of a course that deals with human aspects of software engineering. It is suggested that the intertwining of a reflective mode of thinking into the education of software engineers in general and especially into a course that focuses on human aspects of software engineering enhance students' understanding of the essence of the discipline as well as their professional performance in the field.

No abstract available.

This article focuses on the teaching of software development methodologies. It presents ten principles of teaching such a topic, while examining each from both a pedagogical and an organizational viewpoint. The teaching principles are demonstrated using the methodology of extreme programming (XP).

Many of us run capstone project courses and do so in different ways. The members of this panel come from different countries, belong to different types of institutions, teach in different computing disciplines and the capstone projects they run also vary considerably. Yet, there is a strong sense of consensus about what a capstone project is and how valuable it is as a learning experience for students.The panel discussion will serve as an inspiration to develop new, and change old capstone project courses. The main aim is to discuss why, or why not, different approaches work in a capstone project. What are the learning objectives behind the approach? What are the problems? What are the benefits? How is assessment managed? What resources, tools and techniques are used to administer and manage the projects?Concrete examples of how capstone projects are run at the six institutions represented by the panellists will be given, and issues such as framework, methodologies, project examples and technologies used in the process of producing projects will be addressed.

This article focuses on teaching and learning human aspects of Software Engineering (SE). Based on several classes that the author taught on the subject, the article describes a framework for a course that deals with cognitive and social aspects of SE. In these classes students worked in teams, and the lessons consisted of lectures, activities, class discussions, and student presentations. The activities which students worked on aimed to address two of the human aspects of SE: the cognitive aspect and the social aspect. Each of these aspects was discussed on the individual level and on the team level. The paper describes selected activities taken from these classes.

The study presented in this article focuses on the conceptions of computer sciences students of the relationships between reward and cooperation in the context of software development. Specifically, students were faced with a conflict between their urge to express personal skills, and the unavoidable need to cooperate with their teammates. The results indicate that if a given financial bonus is distributed among team members, the majority of the students prefer that a small portion of the bonus be allocated based on individual contributions, while the majority of the reward is divided equally among the team members. These result are analyzed in the context of software engineering education. Based on this study, this paper suggests a tool which can be used by instructors, both for forming of teams and for team evaluation.

No abstract available.

During the ITiCSE 2002 conference in Århus, Denmark, a panel presentation on the topic of import to and export from Computing Science Education and other fields focused on the case of Mathematics Education Research. The outcome was very successful, with the panelists' presentations giving rise to active audience participation.Continuing with the theme from the earlier panel, this proposal suggests a similar format with the expanded theme of transfer into Computing Science Education from Science Education Research. This panel will look at how research theories developed in the context of various areas of science education can be applied to Computing Science Education as well as ways in which computing science educational theories may be used in those areas. Because Computing Science Education is a young discipline, it is still in search of its research framework [2]. In formulating such a framework, it can be practical and productive to adapt approaches from research in other disciplines, both educational and related areas. At the same time, the younger discipline can offer innovative new approaches to the older discipline.The panelists will examine possibilities and difficulties in some import and export attempts between several areas of Science Education Research and Computing Science Education. For this context, science is considered to include mathematics.

This panel will look at how research theories developed in the context of mathematics education can be applied to computing science education as well as ways in which computing science theories may be used in mathematics education research. Computing science education is a young discipline still in search of its research framework [6]. A practical approach to formulating such a framework is to adapt useful approaches found in the research from other disciplines, both educational and related areas. At the same time, a young discipline may also offer innovative new approaches to the older discipline.The mathematics education discipline is relatively mature, with its roots extending from the close of the 19th century. For about the past 50 years, mathematics educators have been studying learning theories, teaching approaches, and other cognitive and social issues with respect to K-12 and higher education. We have found that many of these theories are useful for gaining insights into how students learn and understand computing science topics, as well as for improving how we teach these topics. For example, the constructivist perspective, which examines students' mental construction of knowledge [7], has had a tremendous impact on the teaching of mathematics. This paradigm, with its roots in Piaget's work, has started to exert a similar influence within computing science education, as evidenced by a recent article by Ben-Ari [4] and a subsequent special issue of Computer Science Education [10] that includes six articles about constructivism in various areas of computing.Another branch of mathematics education research theory focuses on student conceptions of specific mathematical concepts. For example, student understanding of the concept of function has been researched extensively in the mathematics education context [8]. This cumulative body of knowledge provides a basis for analyzing students' conceptions in many areas of a computing science program, including functional programming, object-oriented programming, and graph algorithms.The panelists will examine possibilities and pitfalls in some import and export attempts between mathematics education research and CS education research.

The paper illustrates how theories from mathematics education can be applied for explaining student conception of computing science ideas. It does this by demonstrating how the theme of reducing abstraction [5] can be used for analyzing students' mental processes when the students are in the process of solving problems in Computability Theory. The topic of Computability Theory in presented here as an example for demonstrating how research in Computing Science education can use learning theories, "borrowed" from mathematics education research, for explaining learning processes.

"… women embrace the "precision" of mathematics." a quote from panelist Paul De Palma's viewpoint article "Why Women Avoid Computer Science" in the June 2001 CACM. Panelist Kim Kihlstrom notes "… I got into electrical engineering and then computer science exactly because I love math." Henderson's evidence indicates that women performed better than men in a mathematically oriented first course in computer science, and women felt the course was more beneficial than a traditional programming oriented first course. Regarding a mathematically oriented functional programming course for high schools Kathi Fisler says "Our high school teachers have noticed females preferring this to a conventional curriculum by as much as 5 to 1!"Coincidence, or is there a common thread here? Please join us for the discussion and share your own viewpoints.

This paper describes a course I taught at the Technion --- The Israel Institute of Technology --- which addressed human aspects of Software Engineering. More specifically, three human aspects involved in developing software systems were the focus of the course: problem solving methodologies in general and their application in developing software systems in particular; mental processes; and social processes of software-system developers.