An initiative recently established at our institution is creating new opportunities for students to deepen their understanding of code and computational thinking, and to embrace questions of access, equity and social justice. In this short paper we report on two contextualized computing courses in this initiative that introduce coding and computational thinking through contextualizing two subfields of AI: Natural Language Processing and Machine Learning. The goal was two-fold: to help students gain foundational computational skills to further their own creative and critical practices; and more broadly, to help them develop better-informed critiques of the use of algorithmic systems, especially AI technology.

Conference presentations usually focus on successful innovations: new ideas that yield significant improvements to current practice. Yet educators know that we often learn more from failure than from success. In this panel, we present four case studies of "good ideas" for improving CS education that resulted in failures. Each contributor will describe their "good idea", the failure that resulted, and wider lessons for the CS community.

Unity (Unity.com) is thought of as a game engine, however in recent years it is identified as a real-time 3D development platform. Part of its power is the underlying object hierarchy of 2D and 3D visual, interactive, audio, and physics objects that can be fully defined in a sophisticated drag and drop development environment. Another part of its power is that it is fully programmable in C#. In fact, fully implementing a project requires 'hooking up' C# functions. Via C# you can even customize the development environment. The bottleneck for Unity designers is learning to navigate the requisite C# code. Unity is gradually being used in courses and workshops outside of the SIGCSE community to teach coding, especially at the high school level. It also has a substantial following among independent novice game developers who do not have formal training in computer science. This workshop is an opportunity for CS educators to (1) get an intense introduction to the Unity development environment, (2) have the object model explained using well-established SIGCSE terminology and perspective, (3) explore and discuss the feasibility of using Unity to teach introductory computer science.

About twice a year, typically at the start of a new semester, the SIGCSE community listserv comes alive with a discussion of tools for grading. This panel formed from a challenge to submit novel perspectives on grading. Of the dozen replies posted within 48 hours, the assembled panelists provide differing perspectives on the same point: let's return to building tools and methodologies for teaching rather than focusing on grading

This reprise of a highly successful SIGCSE 2018 workshop provides a novel perspective on: skills that are often labeled 'women's work' are the foundational principles of computer science developed from textile crafts. The 'Code Crafters' curriculum, which expands Andrea Mayer's Snap-based TurtleStitch embroidery programming project, is being successfully taught in 3 ways: as a full semester undergraduate course, as a weeklong summer workshop for middle and high school students, and as a half day event. The SIGCSE workshop will introduce participants to potential adaptations of this curriculum, report on its use as both a CS 0, and CS 1 course, and give participants hands-on experience in designing and rendering a machine embroidery pattern in TurtleStitch and Processing Stitch (Java). Key concepts from the full semester curriculum will be demonstrated: (1) crocheting as a vehicle for learning about primitive operations instruction codes for process control, and reading and writing patterns (algorithms); (2) programing machine embroidery provides exposure to agile design; (3) contrasting embroidery with quilting provides experience in abstraction and reuse; (4) weaving and tapestry provide concrete illustrations of manipulating two dimensional data structures; (5) studying embroidery machine file formats demonstrates how language translation takes place; (6) sharing a limited resource (a $500 programmable, single thread machine) provides concrete experience in scheduling, and product testing; (7) collaborative crochet and quilted projects provide experience in team dynamics. Participants in this workshop will be invited to join an online community of mutual support.

Professional behavior in the workplace needs to promote broad participation and inclusion. The competitive nature of the traditional classroom can thwart pedagogical goals to model, support and give practice to collaborative professionalism in the Tech industry and graduate level computing-based disciplines. Diverse populations, ingrained cultural expectations, and a significant range of opportunities for developing computing expertise prior to undergraduate opportunities can all exacerbate this problem. The goal of this BoF is to bring together educators who want to promote inclusive professionalism in the classroom and their community. We hope to use this collaborative setting to identify major issues and to set an agenda for further collaboration among the participants. The long-term goal is to create vehicles for best practice such as stories, curricular activities, and standards that can effect change in the CS community.

The New York Times published an op-ed by Anita Hill [3] suggesting that women in tech consider class action to remedy the gender bias that is increasingly being reported in the mass-media. This panel raises the question "what are we doing in undergraduate programs to reduce the 'Mad Men', 'Brogrammer' culture she describes that is increasingly being reported in the popular press. Part of our mission as educators is to develop professional behavior so that our students entering the workforce not only understand what it means to act professionally, but understand that it is their responsibility to actively push back on the existing bias within the tech culture. As moderator Ursula Wolz brings a depth of insight from 40 years of industrial and academic experience, including a National Science Foundation project to broaden participation in computing [5]. She does not believe this problem can be solved through quantitative data collection on who does well in computer science, but that SIGCSE needs to begin to collect good stories (ala Sally Fincher [2]) on what constitute best practices to support diversity. The panelists present a range of perspectives that have the potential to establish new cultural norms in the single most influential industry in our economy.

Broadening participation in computing invites a diverse constituency into a traditional computing culture. This workshop provides a novel perspective: skills that are often labeled 'women's work' are the foundational principles of computer science developed from textile crafts. The 'Code Crafters' curriculum, which expands Andrea Mayer's Snap-based TurtleStitch embroidery programming project, is being successfully taught in 3 ways: as a full semester undergraduate course, as a weeklong summer workshop for middle and high school students, and as a half day event. The SIGCSE workshop will introduce participants to potential adaptations of this curriculum, report on its use as both a CS 0, and CS 1 course, and give participants hands-on experience in designing and rendering a machine embroidery pattern in TurtleStitch and Processing Stitch (Java). Key concepts from the full semester curriculum will be demonstrated: (1) crocheting is a vehicle for learning about primitive operations instruction codes for process control, and reading and writing patterns (algorithms); (2) programing machine embroidery provides exposure to agile design; (3) contrasting embroidery with quilting provides experience in abstraction and reuse; (4) weaving and tapestry provide concrete illustrations of manipulating two dimensional data structures; (5) studying embroidery machine file formats demonstrates how language translation takes place; (6) sharing a limited resource (a $500 programmable, single thread embroidery machine) provides concrete experience in scheduling, and product testing; (7) collaborative crochet and quilted projects provide experience in team dynamics. Participants should bring a laptop, and will be invited to join an online community of mutual support.

This paper reports on the results of a multi-year project in which we identified essential pedagogy and curriculum for teaching introductory computing courses focused on Creative Computation using Processing. The curriculum aligns with a traditional 'CS1' approach as well as 'AP CS A', and goes well beyond "CS Principles" standards to teach foundations of computer science and programming. We addressed the bridge between high school and entry-level college curriculum in computer science (American freshman high school to freshman college) and demonstrated how algorithmic art provides a powerful vehicle for diverse student populations within a broad range of pedagogical frameworks ranging from traditional structured classrooms to inquiry-based student-driven project labs. A secondary result is that instructors require long-term engagement with mentors to extend their own knowledge of computing, visual arts and appropriate pedagogy.

No abstract available.

In this paper we describe the success of bringing Creative Computation via Processing into two very different high schools that span the range of possibilities of grades 9-12 in American education. Creative Computation is an emerging discipline that requires a thorough grounding in both media arts and computing. We report on how contextualized computing that supports integration of media arts, design, and computer science can successfully attract and motivate students to learn foundations of programming and come back for more. The work of two high school teachers with divergent pedagogical styles is presented. They successfully adapted a college-level Creative Computation curriculum to their individual school cultures providing a catalyst for significant increases in total enrollment as well as female participation in high school computer science.

This workshop showcases an engaging way to attract students who typically avoid a traditional introductory Computer Science course (CS1), with fully developed, classroom-tested course materials. This workshop has been successful at SIGCSE and other venues in the past. This year we highlight our successful approach in pre-AP courses, as well as continued refinement of curriculum for college-level CS1. Our courses focus on essential CS1 principles, but show applications of these principles with contemporary, diverse examples of computing in a modern context, including advanced areas typically not accessible in CS1 such as: physics-based simulations, fractals and L-systems, image processing, emergent systems, cellular automata and data visualization. Students produce dynamic visual work using the programming language Processing, which is fully compatible with Java. We aim to inspire the Computer Science community to use innovative and creative approaches to attract a broader audience to their classes.

No abstract available.

We summarize the results of our NSF funded exploration of interdisciplinary computing, including the following points: Interdisciplinary computing spans fields as diverse as visual art, music, the humanities and social sciences, health sciences, pure science, engineering, and mathematics. No field of inquiry in the 21st century extends its knowledge without the influence of computing.[1-4]; A bifurcation is occurring: at some institutions this climate of interdisciplinary work is nurtured, while at others it is thwarted by lack of motivation, resource limitations or simple inaccessibility.; Interdisciplinary computing is inherently collaborative between computing specialists and specialists in other fields. It is not merely pair-wise: computational-X or Y-informatics, but often the collaboration draws from a number of fields.; An important question is what is the breadth and depth of knowledge and skill required to engage in this work. Who needs to know what? What is the language of discourse? How is a methodology established and accepted, and how is subsequent work evaluated?; The mundane concerns of intellectual ownership, boundaries on the discipline (e.g. silos), professional advancement, financial support, and institutional buy-in can diminish the pure intellectual joy that is evident in existing interdisciplinary work.; Impediments are encountered in making the effective collaborations that are essential for the advancement of all the disciplines. The computing disciplines are essential to and also dependent on nearly all other branches of intellectual discovery. [5-6]

No abstract available.

To broaden participation in computing requires exposing students to a variety of experiences. CS Unplugged promotes learning through kinesthetic activities. This paper identifies three types of learning (1) problem solving, (2) creative construction, and (3) open-ended invention, that lend themselves to activities that engage middle school students in physical movement to learn computing. Via surveys and a personality traits activity "True Colors" we examined whether self-identified personality types were predisposed to particular kinesthetic learning activities. Our results suggest that personality type as defined by True Colors does not predict selection of an activity type. Furthermore, the students in our summer Interactive Journalism Institute were significantly more predisposed to pick open-ended invention. These results suggest directions in which K-12 computing curriculum should take to reach the broadest constituency.

As the need for multidisciplinary computing education continues to increase, consideration for distributed expertise will become critical to implementing a successful curriculum. A model of cooperative expertise is presented in which faculty maintain responsibility for their own course, creating and evaluating assignments for their students that support learning in their colleagues' courses as well. We present outcomes of an experiment to implement this model at two geographically separated institutions through three courses (two at one institution, one at the other), by faculty in computer science, media and English. Results reported include faculty analysis of student achievement in each course and student surveys of attitudes toward multidisciplinary collaboration. Overall, it appears that student learning and attitudes are enhanced by the experience.

As the computing education community grapples with integrating computing into K-12 curriculum, the focus remains primarily on identifying appropriate grade level content and skills[3]. Two problems articulated by Margolis et al.[5], are (1) how to bring computing into an already over-burdened curriculum, (2) how to provide substantive professional development for teachers. We need to look beyond teaching computing concepts as isolated from other disciplines. The power of computing lies in its broad applicability to facilitate creativity in other domains. The panelists will report on using Scratch (http://scratch.mit.edu) in language arts, science and social studies curricula. Our programs demonstrate to middle and high school students and teachers how computational thinking, computing concepts and programming are essential to their course of study. We emphasize active learning where computing is a tool for creativity. We demonstrate how learning 21st century computing skills in the classroom can be fun. This panel will present three perspectives on using Scratch for humane games, scientific modeling and interactive storytelling. There will be significant time for the audience to participate in discussion of broad applicability of our approaches and whether this pedagogy can work at the undergraduate level.

To broaden participation in computing we need to look beyond traditional domains of inquiry and expertise. We present results from a demonstration project in which interactive journalism was used to infuse computational thinking into the standard curriculum and regular classroom experience at a middle school with a diverse population. Outcomes indicate that we were able to develop positive attitudes about computational thinking and programming among students and teachers who did not necessarily view themselves as “math types.” By partnering with language arts, technology and math teachers at Fisher Middle School, Ewing New Jersey, we introduced the isomorphism between the journalistic process and computational thinking to 7th and 8th graders. An intense summer institute, first with the teachers and then with students recruited from the school, immersed them in the “newsroom of the future” where they researched and wrote news stories, shot and edited video, and developed procedural animations in Scratch to support their storylines. An afterschool club sustained the experience. The teachers adapted interactive journalism and Scratch programming to enrich standard language arts curriculum and are infusing computational thinking in classroom experiences throughout the school.

No abstract available.

To address the critical shortage of students entering computing fields, as well as broaden participation in computing, we present a summer and afterschool program in Interactive Journalism through which middle school students and their teachers develop an appreciation for and competence in computational thinking. We report on the outcomes of our first year in which three middle school language arts teachers, a technology teacher and a guidance counselor collaborate with college faculty to publish a school magazine of the future. Students and their teachers research and conduct interviews to develop news stories that are then presented as story packages with text, video, and procedural animations in Scratch. Results of formal data collection show changes in students' perceptions of what it means to program, as well as their emerging confidence in their ability to design computational solutions and to program.

No abstract available.

No abstract available.

Supporting a workforce that can create, not simply consume, computing technology requires a shift in pedagogy toward problem solving in a gender neutral, culturally and ethnically diverse community. It requires an authentic learning environment in which students solve real problems as a collaborative community with their peers from other disciplines. We report on three pedagogical approaches, namely student selected projects in a CS course, a multidisciplinary project-based course, and courses that partner across disciplines that provide on-demand content.

No abstract available.

We describe how project management and team communication skills are taught and practiced in two experiences. Our CS III course provides a formal introduction and practice in homogenous small group settings. Our new multidisciplinary yearlong video game course provides extensive practice of these skills through the development of a single deliverable (a video game) produced by a large team (an entire class of approximately 20 students). This model can be extended to other institutions very easily.

No abstract available.

The generally accepted wisdom among teachers of English composition is that a "rewrite cycle" should be used as a teaching strategy. Rather than expecting students to extrapolate from the grading comments on paper N what they should do differently on paper N + 1, it has become conventional to ask for a rewrite of paper N itself. Of course, there are many variations on this theme. For example, peer review may supplement or replace some of the rounds of grading.The panelists will explore some of the ways they have applied this pedagogic strategy in computer science courses. Most obviously, when we have our students write papers, we have them do rewrites. However, some of us don't stop there, but rather also apply the same idea to the writing of programs or mathematical analyses. This encourages our students to do a high-quality job, and to feel that they have truly mastered a topic.Clearly, there are tradeoffs and difficulties, principally involving time. The panelists will also discuss this aspect, indicating how they have coped with the pitfalls, and indicating what has worked well, and what not so well. Ultimately, however, all the panelists are optimistic about the value of rewrite cycles.After the panelists share their experiences, there will be some time for discussion with the audience. Based on the interest this topic provoked on the sigcse.members mailing list, and in ensuing private email, we look forward to an active audience. We will also make materials from the session available at http://www.gustavus.edu/~max/rewrite/

No abstract available.

This paper discusses the motivation for a simple package designed to incorporate user interactivity into a first course in computer science. The package enables novice programmers to build programs with GUI-like interactivity while maintaining good design principles. An advantage of this package is that it is easy to implement using the Swing class. Therefore, it can be used as a case study to illustrate Java features.

In the fall of 1998, the ACM Education Board and the Educational Activities Board of the IEEE Computer Society appointed representatives to a joint task force to prepare Computing Curricula 2001 (CC2001), the next installment in a series of reports on the undergraduate computer science curriculum that began in 1968 and was then updated in 1978 and 1991. Interim reports on the initial planning of the curriculum were presented at the SIGCSE symposium and the IEEE Frontiers in Education Conference in both 1999 and 2000. The CC2001 Task Force released its first draft report at the 2000 SIGCSE conference and plans to release its penultimate draft at SIGCSE 2001. The purpose of this session is to describe how we expect the recommendations of the report to apply in practice. The panelists represent a range of institutions and can therefore speak to the questions that audience members from similar institutions might have.

In some circles, all programming is collaborative, yet in many CS1 and CS2 courses, individual programming assignments are made, collaboration with other students is cheating, and tailoring a program found on the web is plagiarism. Many educators feel that collaboration belongs only in a very few upper division courses. Others have experience to show that early collaboration broadens the learning of students, to become more effective professional individuals. Most conclude that a blend of the two styles is best for students, and can reduce cheating/plagiarism.Does collaboration belong in programming classes? Where does collaboration end and cheating/plagiarism begin? What are the advantages, problems and techniques of allowing collaboration on programming assignments in CS1 and CS2? The moderator created six discussion questions. Each member of the panel has chosen the position they can strongly support from experience. This panel will discuss these questions in detail among the panelists and audience.

In traditional CS 1 classes students may not develop an appreciation for the planning process in software development. Current IDEs provide such immediate feedback that students can complete courses without an appreciation for the need to plan in advance and design thoughtfully. The course unit described here took time out from a Java-based CS 1 course to give students practical experience in programming a small robot in a highly restricted setting. Outcomes are described in detail. They are based on instructor's notes, and on analysis of both videotaped student demonstrations and student summative essays.

In 1981 the APCS Development Committee recommended the use of Pascal in an AP course whose first exam was given in 1984. This decision was controversial; BASIC was in widespread use and serious consideration was given to a language-neutral exam and course. In 1985 an ad-hoc committee made recommendations on changing the exam format, essentially creating two courses that correspond roughly to CS1 and CS2. In 1995 an ad-hoc committee was convened to make recommendations on how best to incorporate C++ into the AP course and exam. The decision to adopt C++, made in 1994, was decidedly controversial. The ad-hoc committee made recommendations on a subset of C++ and on classes similar to those in the standard library, but which were safe for novice programmers to use.

Teaching a new programming in CS1 requires the instructor to make several important decisions regarding sequencing of topics. In teaching Java, the basic decisions center around how to perform input and output, when to teach the AWT (Abstract Window Toolkit) and threads, whether to begin with applets or applications, and how much detail about object-oriented programming and Java features is required in the beginning. This paper describes a language features gently approach to teaching CS1 in Java.

This paper describes how to incorporate user interactivity and graphics into a first course in computer science. Problems and alternative solutions are discussed. A Java package called simpleIO that we developed is presented. It allows novice programmers to build simple GUI -based programs while maintaining good design principles. The package includes methods for requesting data from the user including integers, reals, string and Booleans. It also supports simple menus, graphics displays and text file handling.

Students come into CS1 with a variety of academic and programming backgrounds. Panelists and audience members will discuss the consequences of this fact, and explore a variety of strategies for coping with the situation.

No abstract available.

An interactive children's story is presented as a unifying class project for CS 2. Curricular topics include: data and algorithm abstraction, project dynamics (team work, software engineering and ethics), multi-media techniques, and hypermedia story telling. We encompass alternative learning styles by fostering collaborative team work, and promoting the big picture over esoteric detail. Students receive a detailed design document, extensive code libraries, and graphic, sound and video files. A story board gives them ample room for individual creativity and whimsy. The project is implemented in C++. This paper describes curricular goals, articulates management concerns and summarizes our past experiences.

We address the problems of effectively teaching introductory programming in the multi-media age.We provide a short history on user interfaces, contrasting the line o~iented, turn taking dialogue model with the event driven, desktop model.We summarize the major conceptual outcomes of this shift: the event model itself, the object-oriented paradigm, and the more detailed classification of 1/0 types.We describe how the current generation of tools rely on programmer convention, thus encouraging sloppy coding.We constrast three current approaches to teaching programming with multi-media and present an approach that exploits the advantages of all three.

article Free Access Share on Integrating mathematics and programming into a three tiered model for computer science education Authors: Ursula Wolz Department of Computer Science, Trenton State College, Hillwood Lakes, Box 4700, Trenton, NJ Department of Computer Science, Trenton State College, Hillwood Lakes, Box 4700, Trenton, NJView Profile , Edward Conjura Department of Computer Science, Trenton State College, Hillwood Lakes, Box 4700, Trenton, NJ Department of Computer Science, Trenton State College, Hillwood Lakes, Box 4700, Trenton, NJView Profile Authors Info & Claims ACM SIGCSE BulletinVolume 26Issue 1March 1994 pp 223–227https://doi.org/10.1145/191033.191126Online:12 March 1994Publication History 8citation317DownloadsMetricsTotal Citations8Total Downloads317Last 12 Months8Last 6 weeks0 Get Citation AlertsNew Citation Alert added!This alert has been successfully added and will be sent to:You will be notified whenever a record that you have chosen has been cited.To manage your alert preferences, click on the button below.Manage my AlertsNew Citation Alert!Please log in to your account Save to BinderSave to BinderCreate a New BinderNameCancelCreateExport CitationPublisher SiteeReaderPDF