Many computer science departments have chosen to hire faculty for teaching-track positions that parallel the standard tenure-track position, providing the possibility of promotion, longer-term contracts, and higher pay for excellence in teaching and service. This birds-of-a-feather is designed to gather educators, both experienced and new to teaching track positions, to share their experiences as members of the faculty of their departments and schools. As teaching track faculty, we share common challenges and opportunities. This year, our discussion will focus on constructive changes we are making to our curriculum to address the many challenges we are currently facing. Many teaching track faculty are assigned to introductory classes and, therefore, have the first opportunity to shape how students are learning computer science in these changing times. Today's challenges include the expanding capabilities of AI and our students' desire to take advantage of them, decreasing enrollments due to concerns about reduced job opportunities in Computer Science, and general uncertainty about whether what we are teaching is relevant to what our students will need to know in the future. We want to focus the discussion on how we, as teaching track faculty, are adapting the way we teach our courses to the changes in our students' behavior and beliefs.

Computer Science enrollments grew rapidly for many years and have since remained at historically high levels. Due to the large enrollment, especially in introductory courses, the need for excellent teaching assistants (TAs), has remained extremely important. In response, numerous CS departments have turned to their expanding pool of undergraduate students to recruit Undergraduate Teaching Assistants (UTAs) to help scale instruction. These Undergraduate Teaching Assistants (UTAs) not only provide help with grading, but are also responsible for developing course resources, running lab sections, and mentoring both students and newly hired UTAs. Ultimately, UTAs have a significant role in affecting course climate, with a particular emphasis on building community, which has a positive impact on underrepresented student populations. Computer Science departments struggle with the challenges of finding, hiring, and training large numbers of teaching assistants. In both 2023 and 2024, this Birds of a Feather (BoF) session drew more than 75 participants, sparking lively discussions about the challenges of hiring and training effective teaching assistants. The first session centered on identifying shared challenges across institutions and exchanging ideas. In the second year, we shifted focus to gathering data from attendees' institutions and building a shared database on TA hiring and training practices. This year, we plan to take the next step by addressing a key challenge identified in previous sessions: developing a crowdsourced repository of best practices for TA training, with the long-term goal of using it as the foundation for a comprehensive TA training curriculum.

The rapid digitalization of the global economy, driven by big data and artificial intelligence, has significantly increased energy consumption, reshaped labor markets, and impacted politics and communities to an extraordinary extent. Addressing these challenges involves educating future computer scientists about the carbon emissions associated with their code and the broader societal consequences of the technologies they design. Traditionally, computing education has focused on optimizing runtime and memory efficiency, frequently overlooking the links to energy efficiency and carbon footprint considerations. Additionally, the integration of ethics into the curriculum has not been comprehensive. This paper proposes a framework for integrating sustainability into the computing curriculum, prioritizing it as a critical consideration for students. It outlines the competencies required for sustainability education and identifies topics directly related to the UN SDGs as a natural entry point for sustainability concepts. Additionally, it reports on a pilot framework implementation at a major US public university, where over 3,200 students from over 30 disciplines were exposed to sustainable coding practices and the ethics of AI and machine learning. The curriculum incorporated transformative teaching and learning methodologies with lectures, supplemental materials, and interactive projects highlighting these themes. Challenges to implementation, which may be encountered by other institutions, are also discussed. Survey results demonstrate that sustainability can be seamlessly integrated into early coding education, encouraging ongoing effort to accentuate energy-efficient coding in computer science courses.

To address the challenges of generative AI in CS1 education, especially its misuse by students to bypass coding exercises, which undermines their engagement with foundational learning, CS1 curricula are evolving to emphasize higher-level problem-solving and systems thinking. In response, a novel experiential learning initiative grounded in High-Impact Practices was introduced to a CS1 course over the course of 2 semesters, involving 132 students. This initiative utilized robotics lab assignments to enhance computational thinking across various levels of granularity, from individual functional components to overall system behaviors, bridging conceptual understanding with real-world applications. The approach emphasized project-based learning, extended engagement time, and reflective practices to deepen students' understanding of core computing concepts and scaffold knowledge integration. The curriculum featured both individual and team-based lab assignments to build foundational skills followed by collaborative problem-solving. The initiative's impact was assessed against a control group of 427 students who completed traditional web development lab assignments. Evaluation methods included thematic analyses of student reflections, instructor opinion surveys, and statistical analysis of exam performances across the semester. Results revealed a substantial positive effect on self-efficacy and learning outcomes. Students in the experiential learning group reported increased confidence in applying their computing skills to real-world scenarios, heightened engagement, and greater improvements in technical proficiency. Notably, their exam scores demonstrated a statistically significant improvement compared to the control group. These findings highlight the effectiveness of integrating practical, interactive elements into computer science education to meet the demands of a rapidly evolving technological landscape.

Many computer science departments have chosen to hire faculty to teach in teaching-track positions that parallel the standard tenure-track position, providing the possibility of promotion, longer-term contracts, and higher pay for excellence in teaching and service. This birds-of-a-feather is designed to gather educators, both experienced and new to teaching track positions, who are currently in such a position to share their experiences as members of the faculty of their departments and schools. As teaching track faculty we share common challenges and opportunities. This year, our discussion will focus on changing nature and structure of our courses.

Many computer science departments have chosen to hire faculty to teach in teaching-track positions that parallel the standard tenure-track position, providing the possibility of promotion, longer-term contracts, and higher pay for excellence in teaching and service. This birds-of-a-feather is designed to gather educators, both experienced and new to teaching track positions, who are currently in such a position to share their experiences as members of the faculty of their departments and schools. This year, we plan on discussing the impacts of evaluations of teaching faculty. Student evaluations of teaching, which are known to be biased, are often weighted heavily in teaching faculty merit review, contract renewal, and the promotion process. Our discussion will encourage teaching faculty to share the extent to which student and other types of evaluations influence their career progression, how transparent expectations around evaluation outcomes are, and what they believe would be a true evaluation of teaching excellence.

Most CS1 classes are designed to teach programming and computational thinking using a specific programming language such as Python or Java. This type of in-depth study leaves little room for creative exploration by students. In particular, at large colleges and universities, the programming assignments are usually autograded to keep up with expanding enrollment. This lightning talk will introduce the idea that simply adding three creative labs that do not use the actual course material, but instead expose students to other computing concepts, can give the students who are struggling a chance to catch up, while also offering them a much-needed breather doing something in computing that is individually directed and creative.

As the number of students taking Computer Science courses continues to rise, the need for excellent teaching assistants (TAs), becomes increasingly important. In response, numerous CS departments have turned to their expanding pool of undergraduate students to recruit Undergraduate Teaching Assistants (UTAs) to fulfill these vital roles. These Undergraduate Teaching Assistants (UTAs) not only provide help with grading, but are responsible for development of course materials, running lab sections, and mentoring both students and newly hired UTAs. Ultimately, UTAs have a major role in affecting course climate, with a particular emphasis on fostering inclusivity, especially for underrepresented student populations. Computer Science departments struggle with the challenges of finding, hiring, and training large numbers of teaching assistants. Last year this Birds of a Feather (BoF) session brought together nearly 100 attendees who discussed the challenges faced in hiring and training effective teaching assistants. This year, the session aims to focus on the exchange of information among participants, both during and after the event, fostering a collaborative effort to establish and sustain effective UTA programs. Data collected and ideas generated will be immediately available to all.

As the number of students taking Computer Science courses continues to rise, the need for excellent teaching assistants (TAs), becomes increasingly important. In response, many CS departments hire TAs from their growing undergraduate student pool to help fill such roles. These Undergraduate Teaching Assistants (UTAs) not only provide help with grading, but are responsible for development of course materials, running lab sections, and mentoring both students and newly hired UTAs. Ultimately, UTAs have a major role in affecting course climate, including making sure all students, especially those from underrepresented populations, feel included. Computer Science departments struggle with the challenges of finding, hiring, and training large numbers of teaching assistants. This birds-of-a-feather is designed to gather educators and administrators together who are responsible for the hiring and training UTAs to share their experiences and suggest solutions to these challenges.

Many colleges and universities offer recitation sections for their large CS courses to help give students individual practice, more in-depth exploration of the lecture material, and one on one assistance with programming concepts. Often this recitation is not required and students will only attend if they feel that their time was put to good use. This lightning talk will introduce an idea that we could help students succeed better by offering an array of choices of recitation sections and allowing the students to choose which to attend to fit their individual needs. The sections could consist of easy, medium and extremely difficult practice problems, review material from earlier in the semester, working ahead for those students who want to go into advanced material, or even a recitation for industry professionals to come in and talk about how the material is applied in their professions. Giving students freedom to choose their recitation section based on content rather than just arbitrarily assigning one earned positive feedback from both students and TAs when I attempted this remotely during the pandemic. This lightning talk is to solicit feedback and possibly collaboration for a larger study on this type of à la carte recitation

Many computer science departments have chosen to hire faculty to teach in teaching-track positions that parallel the standard tenure-track position, providing the possibility of promotion, longer-term contracts, and higher pay for excellence in teaching and service. This birds-of-a-feather is designed to gather educators, both experienced and new to teaching track positions, who are currently in such a position to share their experiences as members of the faculty of their departments and schools. This year, we plan on discussing the impacts of institutional leadership on teaching faculty. Our discussion will encourage teaching faculty to share the extent to which they are included and valued in leadership positions. It will also ask teaching faculty the extent to which they have support and advocacy among non-teaching-faculty leaders at their institutions.

How has CS education changed since SIGCSE first began in 1968? This panel of presenters, with 135 years of teaching instruction between them, will remind some attendees of what used to be and educate newer members on what life was like pre-internet. Topics to be discussed include changes in content, presentation medium, equipment and environment, students and audience, and pedagogy. Audience members will be engaged through peer instruction questions during and between topic discussions and may use their cell phones or laptops to respond to questions. This panel will allow our community to acknowledge the diversity and experience in our organization and celebrate our heritage. We believe old-timers who wish to reminisce and young, new instructors who are interested in a historical aspect will be interested in the session.

As online offerings have matured and expanded, new efforts have recently been devoted to opening fully-accredited online versions of traditional on-campus classes. Such classes may be offered to on-campus students for greater flexibility during busy semesters, or to allow them to continue to make progress toward their degrees during internships or semesters away from campus. This trend intersects with a growing CS for All movement that sees more and more non-computer science majors enrolling in CS classes. As online offerings expand, it is important for us to understand who enrolls in online sections and the reasons for their choices, both to make sure that learning outcomes are similar across different delivery mechanisms, and to take advantage of opportunities to tailor course content to specific audiences. In this analysis, we look at two versions, one online and one traditional, of a CS1 class offered at a major public research university. We investigate demographic, motivational, and experiential components to identify which types of students are most likely to select each version and what implications this decision has for student success and course design.

No abstract available.