This Innovative Practice Full Paper outlines the findings of a survey conducted at the Robert Gordon University (Scotland, UK), focusing on feedback from faculty members and reflections subsequent to the introduction of a Pass/Fail grading system in the CS1 curriculum within the School of Computing, complementing previous work done focussing on the same implementation from the student perspective. This study aims to understand the impact of this grading model on teaching and assessment practices, student engagement, and motivation from the perspective of the module coordinators involved in the foundation year modules where this grading model was implemented. Analysis of the data indicates a generally positive reception of the Pass/Fail grading model among staff members. They reported streamlined marking processes and simplified grading grids as notable advantages. However, concerns were voiced regarding potential student demotivation and the ambiguity in determining the Pass/Fail threshold, which matched results from the student survey. Staff also encountered challenges in adapting assessment designs, particularly in shifting away from traditional grading paradigms. By shedding light on these observations, this paper contributes insights into the intricacies and consequences of integrating a Pass/Fail grading system into the early stages of an undergraduate computing curriculum. It not only underscores the need for careful consideration of pedagogical shifts but also provides valuable guidance for future implementation strategies. In summary, this research delves into the experiences and perspectives of staff members directly involved in implementing the Pass/Fail grading model. By addressing both the benefits and challenges encountered, it offers a comprehensive understanding of the implications of such a grading system within the context of undergraduate computing education. This, in turn, can inform decision-making processes and refine pedagogical approaches for enhanced faculty experience. Moving forward, exploring longitudinal effects of the Pass/Fail grading model on student retention rates could offer deeper insights into its efficacy in preparing students for future endeavors. Moreover, investigating potential variations in perceptions and outcomes across different academic settings and/or contexts could yield valuable comparative analyses.

This paper presents an experience report of online attendance and associated behavioural patterns during a module in the first complete semester undertaken fully online in the autumn of 2020, and the corresponding module deliveries in 2021 and 2022. The COVID-19 pandemic of 2020 resulted in a sudden move of most university teaching online, at a global and large-scale level. This, combined with the need to maintain “business as usual” resulted in new levels of student engagement data for largely unchanged pedagogical processes. Engagement data continued to be gathered throughout the subsequent, phased return to face-to-face and hybrid learning, although at a lesser level of granularity. The wealth of student engagement data gathered during this time allows quantitative insights into how student behaviour continued to adapt during and after the enforced online learning during the COVID-19 pandemic. The anonymous subjects of this case study are computing science students in their final year of undergraduate study. We examine their engagement with the virtual learning environment, including engagement with recorded lecture material, attendance in online sessions and engagement during in-person labs. We relate this to both the students' final grades and the content of the module itself. A number of conclusions are drawn based on this empirical data, relating to observations made by staff and pedagogical theory. There was a moderate, but significant, correlation between engagement in synchronous online lecture sessions and grades during thelockdown phase, but the strength of this correlation has reduced in subsequent years as normality has returned. From monitoring behaviour in online sessions down to minute-by-minute accuracy, it can also be seen that some students strategised their engagement based on sessions they perceived to be most directly contributory to their assessment, placing little value on live guest lecturer sessions. During enforced online learning, the most successful students, on average, engaged with less repeat content than less successful students, instead apparently utilising lecture recordings to “catch up” with missed live lectures.

This Innovative Practice Full Paper investigates the implications of implementing a Pass/Fail marking scheme within the undergraduate curriculum, specifically across first year computing modules in a Scottish Higher Education Institution. The motivation for this implementation was to ease stress and pressure on students entering higher education, which became particularly relevant following the COVID-19 pandemic. The study reports on the results of a survey that gathered feedback from Stage 1 and Stage 2 students who experienced the Pass/Fail implementation, and results shows that students generally appreciate the Pass/Fail model, although for many, the benefits only become apparent once they are exposed to alternative grading models. A number of recommendations are made for the implementation of similar marking schemes within computing in Higher Education curricula.

This panel convenes four educators, each from different institutions and each with experience managing group projects. Their expertise spans topics including: peer assessment and peer evaluation; entrepreneurship; transdisciplinarity; internationalisation; inclusivity; social values; educational technology and tools; feedback and feed-forward; peer rating; free-riders; as well as blended learning; and post-pandemic online discourse. They reflect on the delight of seeing students collaborate to deliver meaningful projects as well as the challenges posed by disengaged students. They also explore a common theme of discordance inherent to teamwork and systems to support student communities.

Throughout the COVID-19 pandemic, institutions have had to shift and adapt rapidly to the ever-changing academic landscape. In response, several new, short-term initiatives were set in motion and new policies were, at least temporarily, adopted to support this rapid change. In computer science, specifically, there were new tools utilized, new modes of delivery employed, and new community engagement practices embraced. As a side effect of all this change, an evolving set of faculty and student expectations emerged.

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.

Throughout the COVID-19 pandemic, computing instructors have adapted their teaching to meet the needs of students in this ever-changing paradigm. These adaptations include the acquisition of new infrastructure, evolving expectations, revised course development strategies and the adoption of new modes of course delivery. Last year, an ITiCSE Working Group, led by Siegel and Zarb, explored the ways in which higher education computing faculty responded to this dramatic shift in the (educational) world [1]. Based on a survey of computing faculty worldwide, the work explored what the academic landscape might look like beyond the impacts of COVID-19. We will explore these results and discuss lessons learned along with the evolution that has taken place since the survey data was collected. Recognizing that it is unlikely that we return completely to pre-pandemic norms, our goal is to identify practices within computing that have newly formed or improved throughout the pandemic, giving extra weight to those that we might hope to keep as we move into a post-pandemic future.

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.

In a review of student programming work (through playback of their submissions via online IDE), it was noted that students could be quite close to a successful solution and repeatedly start over, deleting all of the work done to that point in time. The words of Thomas Edison expressed the problem associated with this current branding: "I have not failed. I've just found 10,000 ways that won't work." While this is meant to imply that failure has led towards success, the idea that something "won't work" captures the mindset that students are facing when using the word 'failure' in regards to programming. In fact, iterations of programs move students incrementally closer to their goal. The notion of a binary concept like pass/fail being applied to programming leaves less room for creativity and exploration. Amongst new programming students, after reaching this point of 'passing', student fear of modifying and 'playing' with working programs has been noted. In order to address the concerns of students and help shift student mindsets away from 'failure' towards 'incremental improvement', a rebranding exercise must take place.

The COVID-19 pandemic has seen an unprecedented and agile global shift in the ways that we educate, and in the ways that students consume their learning activities. This necessary paradigm shift has allowed many educators to take a critical look at their teaching styles, and to use technology in innovative ways to create the best experience for their students. Computing is a subject which traditionally, focuses on experiential, in-person activities such as labs, groupwork, and tutorials. COVID-19 has forced educators to reconsider the use of time and catalyzed overnight innovation. Some of these new practices are ones that would be valuable to learn from and carry forward into our post-COVID teaching. This BoF will provide a platform for discussion of what the post-COVID academic landscape might look like, and how we can use lessons learned during this educational shift to improve our practice.

As students transition into higher education, their experience can be quite new and foreign to them - at times acting as a barrier into higher education. This experience, while an individual one, consists of many concerns that are shared amongst these transitioning students. Partly as a result of these concerns, retention rates of first year Computer Science students suffer. These topics were discussed and analysed at length in various studies, panels and working groups to create an initial body of understanding, influenced by a number of institutions across the world. However, the recent and unprecedented COVID-19 pandemic has caused further disruption: it is likely that students transitioning into higher education during the pandemic were faced with unparalleled concerns, anxieties and stresses.

This Research to Practice Working Process presents the first phase of the study, in which background information was sought from the literature and by interviews pedagogical experts from Laurea University of Applied Sciences (Laurea). The background study sought to gain an understanding of what factors influenced the introduction of the Learning by Developing (LbD) approach at Laurea. Background information is important for the study because the LbD Action Model will also be piloted at another institution during this study. The LbD model is piloted at Robert Gordon University (RGU), in the UK, where background research is also carried out, as cultural factors and pedagogical models tend to vary widely around the world and therefore it is essential to understand them.The main aim of this research is to find out whether the Learning by Developing (LbD) Action Model is a suitable teaching approach to be used within a computing science curriculum. The study will be carried out in two higher education institutions: Laurea in Finland and RGU in the UK. The subjects of the study are computing students, lecturers and other staff members at both of these higher education institutions, as well as clients participating in the chosen study modules.

This Innovative Practice Full Paper presents a study which considers the implications of embedding professional communication tools within the computing curriculum. Computing students are comfortable using various communication tools such as social media applications in their personal lives, but are rarely trained or monitored when transitioning to using these tools professionally. This is despite the fact that these tools, such as Slack, Jabber and Microsoft Teams are rapidly becoming an expected staple of their professional toolkit. 243 students were invited to use Slack as their primary communication mechanism for set taught modules with staff and their fellow students across two institutions in Scotland. This allowed for an understanding to be developed of computing students' attitudes and experiences when using these communication tools, as well as a reflection on staff experiences. A number of recommendations are made for the inclusion of these tools within computing in Higher Education curricula.

This paper explores the potential for new work-based apprenticeship degrees to encourage more women into computing degrees and the IT sector. In the UK, women are currently under-represented on computing courses. Meanwhile the IT industry requires more computing graduates, in general, and specifically more highly skilled women to create appropriate products and systems. The UK has recently introduced apprenticeship computing degrees, where the apprentice is a work-based employee. In some models, apprentices spend 20% of their time on Higher Education studies and also gain credits through work-based learning; in others, apprentices spend blocks of time in Higher Education and the workplace. These degrees offer a new and innovative route to studying computing at university. Largely funded by employers, apprentices are salaried, and their fees are paid, paving the way for more people to study for a degree. The work context enables apprentices to keep their jobs (if relevant) or to move into IT roles and start a computing degree without necessarily having computing qualifications; the degrees have no upper age limit. Extending the work-based approach of US cooperative education and student work placement models, apprenticeship degrees have been introduced to increase skills levels through a close partnership between universities and employers. This is particularly important in IT, where the sector is expanding, and employers are looking for both good technical and personal skills. With this model, employers are collaboratively involved in the design of the degrees and apprentices graduate with extensive work experience.We posed the following research question: Are there differences in the paths into computing apprenticeship degrees between women and men? A survey was conducted with apprentices beginning a degree in Fall 2019: Cyber Security, Data Science, IT Management for Business, or Software Engineering/Development. Participants were asked about their routes into the apprenticeship and the IT sector. Apprentices at five universities in Scotland and one in Northern Ireland completed the survey, on paper or online (n=85; 23 female, 59 male).The results revealed a less severe gender imbalance than with comparative on-campus degrees (28% female), but this varied greatly across the subjects, from Data Science, where 55% of respondents identified as female and IT Management for Business (40% female), to Software Development (27% female) and Cyber Security (only 11% female). Apprentices were more likely to have started the degree at least a few years after leaving school and this was especially true for women. More female respondents had also been with their current employer for over five years. However, women were slightly more likely to have joined their employers in order to start the apprenticeship.This initial work identifies opportunities to recruit women onto computing degree apprenticeships, for example by targeting women who have started careers. It also highlights that there are challenges in recruiting women into certain subject areas, especially Cyber Security, but also Software Development. Exploring our respondents' motivations for choosing their subjects illuminates the gender balance challenge and indicates how degree apprenticeships can encourage more women into the IT sector.

This paper discusses a video-based approach trialled within Robert Gordon University. Students are typically asked to formally deliver presentations (either individually, or in groups) for summative assessment. Timetabling issues, large student numbers and staff availability can prevent these presentations from being conducted in effective learning environments. Marking is often completed after the presentations, with markers referring to shorthand notes in order to award a grade, potentially missing out specific feedback and action points. Furthermore, students are sometimes reluctant to present, and feel that they only have one chance to "get it right". Students were asked to film their presentations and submit them digitally for grading. This assessment style was trialled over four modules across two semesters and showed a number of benefits: students gave positive feedback about the experience and indicated that they appreciated the fact that they could review and rehearse their submission multiple times, thus submitting their best version for assessment. Staff found that marking time was reduced and they were delivering more specific feedback, as they were able to review the work multiple times.

As students transition into higher education, their experience can be quite new and foreign to them. This experience, while an individual one, consists of many concerns that are shared amongst these transitioning students. Partly as a result of these concerns, retention rates of first year Computer Science students suffer. Members of this panel have been involved in multi-year studies across Scotland [2, 5] as well as an international study [3] looking at the student experience as they transition into undergraduate Computer Science. This panel hopes to discuss the transition into CS1 and implications for Computer Science retention rates from varied international perspectives as well as through the lens of online learning. It further hopes to discuss new ways that we might be able to better support first year CS student retention in light of collected transition data, as well as the current state of any implemented recommendations in previous work (you may want to rephrase this).

Graduate Apprenticeship degree programmes look to overcome the segregation of learning and working, by integrating traditional education into the context of the work environment. This poster showcases a number of actions that were put into place to mitigate challenges that arose during the first run of these programmes.

Graduate Apprenticeships look to overcome the segregation of learning and working by integrating traditional education into the context of the work environment. This poster looks to highlight the importance of peer interactions, specifically for Online Distance Learners and how Robert Gordon University has implemented this within its GA programmes through on-campus days.

Software development companies want new hires with strong interpersonal and problem solving skills. To ensure the development of such skills, they must be embedded throughout the curriculum. However, many students struggle to collaborate with peers and in self-regulated practice during the early stages of their course. Explicit scaffolding can, however, motivate such engagement. This tips and techniques session shows how an ice-breaker using LEGO EV3 robots at two UK institutions enhanced peer interaction and increased self-regulated practice over the first four weeks of 2016-17 and 2017-18.

Graduates in CS are required to have a background in project management, but often this is taught as a theoretical module, with little "real-world" relevance. A Project Management module has been redeveloped around the idea of having a real client interact with the class throughout the module, to positive comments from staff and students alike.

We examine controversial issues surrounding the locus of control in the implementation of learning agreements, plans or contracts, in the context of the U.K. university-level Graduate Apprenticeship scheme. We begin by giving an account of the stakeholders and their positions as well as their motivating principles as they strive to maintain their respective loci of control with regard to the negotiation of the learning agreement. We then describe the idiomatic challenges to implementation of a learning agreement and subsequent plan in work-based learning environments with a range of employers from different sectors. An investigation into the manner in which learning agreement tenets are changed due to competing pressures on the various stakeholders leads to a discussion of challenges to successful prioritisation of the learning plan that occur as a result of mutually exclusive requirement sets. We discuss the challenges that may present themselves in which the requirements of one set of stakeholders appear to conflict with others and the questions that are raised as those involved seek to ensure suitable standards of academic quality in difficult cases. Finally, we discuss whether learning agreements are the most appropriate operational instruments for maintaining standards in these circumstances.

One of the most significant changes in Higher Education pedagogy that has occurred over the past fifty years is the idea that university students should not just be taught theoretical subject knowledge but should engage with practical aspects of their course so developing the skills and professional competences that will allow them to gain successful employment after graduation. In this paper, we relate this development to the Aristotelian notion of intellectual virtue and specifically the concept of phronesis. We discuss the way in which this idea has developed from classical beginnings to the modern educational setting, and argue that the notion of phronesis, that is, practical wisdom or prudential judgement, is crucial to a range of activities which are fundamental to science, engineering and computing education. These include an understanding of what it means to engage in authentic learning and the solution of open-ended or ill-structured problems. We also discuss the role the concept plays in describing key features of work-based learning. Finally, we make some comments concerning the relative value the education system places on different types of knowledge, and why an appropriate understanding of phronesis allows for a proper appreciation of contingent knowledge within the curriculum.

The experience of transitioning into and starting higher education is a very individual one, with some applicants viewing the prospect of higher education as an unknown entity; for those who are first in their family or community to consider higher education, this can seem an "alien environment". These are just some of the issues that lead to applicants experiencing levels of concern when considering a transition into higher education. This international working group proposes to consider concerns across a wide range of participants: namely students who are in the process of transitioning into a higher education environment, and students who have recently completed this transition.

The attempt to embed Authenticity within the learning process in higher education has been a driving principle within many pedagogical approaches to Higher Education developed over the past three decades. The desire to allow students to learn in a manner that closely resembles the way in which expertise is developed outside the academic environment is a central element of problem-based, inquiry-based and project-based learning. Exploring the implications of authenticity for student achievement and the ways in which this should be assessed has led to innovative teaching methods and ways of evaluating student performance. Unfortunately, authenticity, and authentic assessment in particular, are concepts which are open to a range of interpretations, not least in an educational context where they may be used by both teachers and students with a variety of meanings. This paper investigates the working definitions of authentic assessment used by teaching staff within a Computing department in one U.K. university. We begin by giving an overview of some relevant aspects of authentic learning, which, historically, draws on pedagogies such as situated learning and social learning theory. We then focus on authenticity in the assessment process and describe a number of models which have been used to identify elements that contribute to this range of meaning. We analyse the descriptions of authentic assessment given by academic staff in terms of these concepts and suggest a framework which can be used to integrate the responses and characterise staff understanding of the authenticity. We then briefly compare these findings with other work investigating student responses to the same question and draw conclusions concerning the relevance of these factors on curriculum development, the use of assessment to drive learning and the role of staff development in promoting positive change in these areas. Finally, we make suggestions for further work.

The problem of how best to assess student learning is a fundamental one in education. Changes to computer science curricula seek to emphasise teaching practices that promote deep learning through direct, contextual examination of student performance on tasks that resemble those of practitioners, rather than more traditional methods. This kind of "authentic assessment" is becoming more popular as it appears to incorporate employability skills associated with professional practice into the curriculum in a natural way.

We examine the concept of motivation from the perspective of Self Determination Theory and give a brief overview of relevant results. We also consider the optimal state known as "Flow" and give an account of its conceptualisation in the theory due to Csikszentmihalyi. After discussion of ways in which these concepts can be measured, we describe a set of preliminary studies that investigate motivation and flow in the context of a first year computing class. We analyse student responses to enquiries about perceptions of motivation and flow experiences and look at links between them. We also discuss intrinsic motivation within the subject.

This paper discusses a study where 249 students from 18 secondary schools around Scotland who were on the verge of applying to study Computing Science at a higher education institution were surveyed on their concerns about the upcoming transition. Preliminary conclusions from this work point to the fact that this transition process is one that seems to evolve with the student as they progress through their education, and as such, should be treated differently at various stages within that process.

Computing is now one of the fastest growing fields of employment, with a large bias placed on developing Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM) education in schools. However, due to the fast pace of technology development, it is increasingly difficult for schools to keep up with the latest computing methodologies. A possible solution is the use of university outreach programmes, whereby local universities can provide training workshops on areas that can be challenging for schools to implement. This can be problematic, as there is a perceived lack of interest in the methods used to interact with secondary school pupils on a university level.

Pair programming has several benefits when it is successfully used by students and experts alike. However, research shows that novice pairs find the necessary pair communication to be one of the main challenges in adopting this process. A set of industry-inspired pair programming guidelines have been derived and evaluated from qualitative examinations of expert pairs, with the aim of helping novice programmers communicate within their pair. This research describes a further evaluation of these guidelines with a number of student pairs, and demonstrates how novice pairs who were exposed to the guidelines became comfortable communicating with their partners.

A set of industry-inspired pair programming guidelines have been derived from qualitative examinations of expert pairs in order to aid novice programmers with their intra-pair communication. This research describes the evaluation of these guidelines with a set of student pairs, and demonstrates how novice pairs who were exposed to the guidelines were more comfortable communicating within their pairs.

Novice pair programmers find communication within their pairs to be one of the greatest difficulties they face when starting to pair program. However, developers cannot pair program without a certain amount of communication. This research describes the development of an analytic coding scheme derived from the observation of the communication of expert pairs working in industry. Communication patterns identified from these expert pairs are being used to help novices learn to be more effective in their pair communication.

Flow theory describes a way of gauging happiness and motivation. The flow experience has been widely researched within several contexts, such as work and education. There are opportunities to explore the occurrence of flow within the context of novice programming.

Programming is a problematic subject to learn due to various factors that impact teaching, learning, and the environment. This research is concerned with creating a suitable measurement which could be used to compare flow levels achieved between weak and strong novice students, where flow is a state of mind where people are so involved in an activity that nothing else seems to matter. It is expected that this measure would then be used to analyse other issues in programming education and software engineering.