Global collaborations have expanded the importance of effective cross-cultural communication in engineering disciplines, with self-efficacy playing a crucial role in developing these skills. This work-in-progress innovative practice paper is a quantitative component of a mixed-method exploratory study investigating the experiences of fifteen computing students from the University of Florida who participated in a nine-week summer study abroad program at Kyoto University, Japan, in 2022. The research aimed to assess the enhancement of cross-cultural engineering self-efficacy and the evolution of students' intercultural understanding. Surveys were conducted at the program's inception and conclusion, allowing for a detailed analysis of students' self-perceived academic capabilities and intercultural awareness over time. Preliminary statistical analysis suggests an increase in students' self-efficacy in cross-cultural engineering by the end of the program, highlighting the impact of the study abroad experience on broadening students' perspectives and enhancing their adaptability in intercultural interactions.

In college-level introductory computer science courses, the programming ability of students is often evaluated using pseudocode responses to prompts. However, this does not necessarily reflect modern programming practice in industry and academia, where developers have access to compilers to test snippets of code on-the-fly. As a result, use of pseudocode prompts may not capture the full gamut of student capabilities due to lack of support tools usually available when writing programs. An assessment environment where students could write, compile, and run code could provide a more comfortable and familiar experience for students that more accurately captures their abilities. Prior work has found improvement in student performance when digital assessments are used instead of paper-based assessments for pseudocode prompts, but there is limited work focusing on the difference between digital pseudocode and compile-and-run assessment prompts. To investigate the impact of the assessment approach on student experience and performance, we conducted a study at a public university across two introductory programming classes (N=226). We found that students both preferred and performed better on typical programming assessment questions when they utilized a compile-and-run environment compared to a pseudocode environment. Our work suggests that compile-and-run assessments capture more nuanced evaluation of student ability by more closely reflecting the environments of programming practice and supports further work to explore administration of programming assessments.

Research on dual-modality and frame-based editors has uncovered strengths and weaknesses to block-oriented approaches to programming and instruction. Building on lessons learned from these editing models, we developed Lilypad, a text-based visual code editor. Lilypad is a modern text-based code editor that generates visual frames around code structures in real-time. Lilypad is designed to simplify the addition of new languages and can operate as a native-code standalone application, plugin, or web-based editor. In this demonstration, we showcase Lilypad's features, design, and real-time use.

Historically, computing instructors and researchers have developed a wide variety of tools to support teaching and educational research, including exam and code testing suites and data collection solutions. Many are then community or individually maintained. However, these tools often find limited adoption beyond their creators. As a result, it is common for many of the same functionalities to be re-implemented by different instructional groups within the CS Education community. We hypothesize that this is due in part to accessibility, discoverability, and adaptability challenges, among others. Further, instructors often face institutional barriers to deployment, which can include hesitance of institutions to utilize community developed solutions that often lack a centralized authority. This working group will explore what solutions are currently available, what instructors need, and reasons behind the above-mentioned phenomenon. This will be accomplished via a literature review and survey to identify the tools that have been developed by the community; the solutions that are currently available and in use by instructors; what features are needed moving forward for classroom and research use; what support for extensions is needed to support further CS Education research; and what institutional challenges instructors and researchers are currently facing or have faced in the past in developing, deploying or otherwise using community software solutions. Finally, the working group will identify factors that limit adoption of solutions and ways to integrate and improve the accessibility, discoverability, and dissemination of existing community projects, as well as manage and overcome institutional challenges.

As computer science educators, many of us share the common challenge of assessing students' programming skills. While a number of commercial services have popped up to fill this need, numerous members of the CS-Education community develop and maintain their own in-house tools. Commercial services may increase the costs to institutions and students, while instructor-developed tools are usually tailored to their own use cases; as a result, new instructors often, in turn, build their own highly-specialized solutions. This BOF is intended to spark a conversation about how we as a community can address this challenge by working together. In particular, we will discuss the availability of current open source tools and how they can be generalized, with a focus on editors, compilers, questionnaires, and scoring systems for assessments, including web-based and local-software solutions. Looking forward, we will discuss possible avenues to unite platforms and code bases, coordinate, and collaborate in the future-including student involvement as part of their coursework (e.g., capstone projects) to further develop platforms. Finally, by providing a dedicated session, we hope to advertise and disseminate the open source availability of these projects for those who seek a low- or no-cost solution for their students.

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.

Dual-modality blocks-text programming environments have shown promise in helping students learn programming and computational thinking. These environments link blocks-based visualizations to text-based representations, which are more typical of production languages. Since prior work shows that some students who learn in dual-modality environments outperform those who learn in text on assessments, we sought to understand specifically how students use dual-modality environments and what support these environments provide to the learning process. We analyzed survey responses and tool logs collected during a study at a large public university in a CS1 course (N=425). We found that students from all prior programming experience backgrounds made use of the ability to visualize code structures by using blocks. Students with prior experience in blocks or no prior experience said they felt the dual-modality instruction helped them understand code structure and meaning. As students progressed through the class, we found that they made more use of the blocks mode's reference palettes than to its drag-and-drop facilities or mode-switching features. By identifying how students interact with dual-modality tools and how they impact student understanding, this work provides guidance for classroom instructors.

Code writing prompts are common on exams in programming courses. Such prompts often collect student answers via pseudocode. For some students this is uncomfortable because they are unable to compile and test their code like on assignments. Our study aims to learn how students perceive different types of programming assessment questions. We collected survey responses from students in a Data Structures course, one before and another after an exam with a coding question where students could elect for a pseudocode essay response or compile-and-test environment response. Results show most students initially preferred running code, but some reconsidered after the exam. The most common reason students preferred pseudocode was that they did not have enough time for correct syntax. This work has important implications for programming assessment and use of code writing prompts in the classroom.

Online learning is becoming an essential pillar of today's education system. As reliance on this mode of education grows, so does the need for security in remote examinations and remote proctoring. One obstacle to remote proctoring is the difficulty in establishing a secure environment. Remote and automated proctoring services use several safeguards to discourage potential cheating. This work intends to build on the technologies used by proctoring services to investigate a profile (side) camera arrangement. While a front-facing camera captures only the examinee's head and shoulders, a profile-angle provides a view of the examinee and their environment by capturing the upper body, hands, and desk. As a result, this setup may discourage dishonest behaviors. Our exploratory pilot investigates this camera arrangement to provide insight into the use of profile cameras, providing guidance for instructors considering remote examinations and a foundation for future work on remote proctoring.

The Droplet family of tools provides novice programmers with a dual-modality environment to learn, offering both blocks and text representations of code. Our showpiece will highlight the next generation of tools in this family, including the launch of Pencil.io, Amphibian 2.0, and work on the development of Lilypad, the next evolution of Droplet. Lilypad will integrate a frame-based editor, which will facilitate study and deployment of dual-modality instruction in later CS coursework and, potentially, industry applications.

In college-level introductory computer science courses, students traditionally learn to program using text-based languages which are common in industry and research. This approach means that learners must concurrently master both syntax and semantics. Blocks-based programming environments have become commonplace in introductory computing courses in K-12 schools and some colleges in part to simplify syntax challenges. However, there is evidence that students may face difficulty moving to text-based programming environments when starting with blocks-based environments. Bi-directional dual-modality programming environments provide multiple representations of programming language constructs (in both blocks and text) and allow students to transition between them freely. Prior work has shown that some students who use dual-modality environments to transition from blocks to text have more positive views of text programming compared to students who move directly from blocks to text languages, but it is not yet known if there is any impact on learning. To investigate the impact on learning, we conducted a study at a large public university across two semesters in a CS1 course (N=673). We found that students performed better on typical course exams when they were taught using dual-modality representations in lecture and were provided dual-modality tools. The results of our work support the conclusion that dual-modality instruction can help students learn computational concepts in early college computer science coursework.

Computer science coursework at the undergraduate level at most institutions includes low-level systems coursework. Such coursework is often largely theoretical. When students complete assignments which involve writing software, they often do so in the context of operating systems not identified and/or connected with their everyday experiences (e.g., Minix or XINU). Approaches also tend to focus on kernel-level operations - leaving out the connections to higher levels of the OS (e.g. graphical user interfaces). To connect systems concepts and assignments to students' personal experiences and provide a mechanism to discuss high-level layers of interactive operating systems, we assembled a Linux/Android operating system variant specifically geared to be accessible to students taking introductory systems courses, dubbed "Reptilian". Reptilian, available as an Open Virtual Appliance (OVA) image, provides both an Ubuntu-derived user-space and the standard Android GUI user-space. The appliance provides a typical Linux kernel development environment for assignments while facilitating demonstration of connections between layers in a modern operating system. To investigate the impact of the use of Reptilian, we compared questions on student evaluations between two semesters - one using Minix as the target system for student assignments and another using Reptilian. The curricula topics were identical, and both courses were taught by the same instructor. Students the cohorts completed comparable projects focused on the process table and filesystem, while the Reptilian cohort also completed a GUI layering assignment. We found that students rated content relevance, learning, and engagement of critical thinking more highly in the Reptilian cohort compared to the Minix cohort.

Women continue to be underrepresented in computer science. Previous research has identified factors that contribute to women's decisions to pursue computing-related majors, but in order to truly address the problem of underrepresentation, we need to develop a deeper understanding of women's experiences within computer science courses. Pair programming is demonstrably beneficial in many ways, and we hypothesize that there are gender differences in student perceptions of this widely used collaboration framework. To explore these differences and move toward a thorough understanding of students' experiences, this paper investigates students' written responses about their experiences with pair programming in a university-level introductory computer science course. Using thematic analysis, we identified overarching themes and distinguished between what men and women reported. Both women and men wrote about their overwhelmingly positive perceptions of pair programming. Women often mentioned that pair programming helps with engagement, feeling less frustrated, building confidence, and making friends. Women also noted that it is easier to learn from peers. These findings shed light on how pair programming may lower barriers to women's participation and retention in computing and inform ongoing efforts to create more inclusive spaces in computing education.

Text languages are perceived by many computer science students as difficult, intimidating, and/or tedious in nature. Conversely, blocks-based environments are perceived as approachable, but many students see them as inauthentic. Bidirectional hybrid environments provide textual and blocks-based representations of the same code, thereby offering students the opportunity to seamlessly transition between representations to build a conceptual bridge between blocks and text. However, it is not known how use of hybrid environments impacts perceptions of programming. To investigate, we conducted a study in a public middle school with six classes (n=129). We found that students who used hybrid environments perceived text more positively than those who moved directly from blocks to text. The results of this research suggest that hybrid programming environments can help to transition students from blocks to text-based programming while minimizing negative perceptions of programming.

The computing and STEM industries face challenges in attracting people to fill expanding needs. The literature shows that computing preconceptions shape interest in and impact decisions of whether or not to enter computing disciplines, especially for women and underrepresented minorities. In this study, our research questions focused on how perceptions of programming in elementary and middle school students varied based on prior programming experience. We examined the programming constructs they found challenging. Our study was in the context of a week-long summer camp dedicated to Scratch-based game development. We conducted semi-structured interviews at the beginning, middle, and end of the weeklong program with 28 students who agreed to participate. During the interviews, we asked students about their perceptions of programming in general and which programming constructs they found easy and/or hard. We found that all students perceived programming as a means of creating artifacts, but that students with prior programming experience went deeper by associating programming with process and function. We also characterize the specific Scratch programming constructs that beginning versus experienced children perceive as easy and/or hard. These findings will help experts and educators better understand how children think about programming and how experience changes these perceptions over time. These findings also have implications on the design of curricula and instructional resources to address difficulties children face while learning to program.

Hybrid, dual-modality programming environments provide both blocks-based and text-based interfaces for programming. While previous research investigated the transition from visual to textual environments, few studies considered these hybrid environments. The purpose of this dissertation is to explore how hybrid programming environments impact computer science competency, confidence, and interest in computer science among students when moving from blocks-based environments to text-based languages. Exploring these questions will help us understand which hybrid environments are effective, in which contexts they are effective, and if they can improve on current approaches to CS instruction.