Colorado Computer Science Educators Conference ( - PowerPoint Presentation

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Colorado Computer Science Educators Conference (ColCSE)

Chris WilcoxColorado State University6/3/2016

Morning Schedule

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Time

Description

9:00-9:30am

Continental Breakfast and

Introductions, summarize

the degree programs and enrollment figures for your institution.

9:30-10:30

Redesigning

CS1/CS2 Course Redesign,

summary of SIGCSE 2016 paper,

optional demonstration

of our automated grading system

.

10:30-11:00

Report from SIGCSE 2016, and

round table of highlights and trends from participants that attended the conference in Memphis this year.

11:00am-Noon

Diversity: How to improve minority and female participation in CS programs? Please bring your enrollment figures and ideas.

Noon-1:00pm

Lunch and Round Table: What are the attributes of organizations that do a good job of undergraduate CS education?

How

can we

find

lecturers in the face of a shortage of qualified CS

faculty?

Afternoon Schedule

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Time

Description

1:00pm-3:00pm

Best Practices: Each institution will briefly describe their demographics, curriculum, challenges,

and

successful

pedagogic practices

(automated

grading, peer instruction, interview grading, etc.)

3:00-4:00pm

Discussion: How do we teach introductory CS?

Programming

languages,

tools

, lectures versus

labs, inverted

classroom, peer instruction, pair programming,

academic

integrity issues, etc.

4:00-4:30pm

Discussion: How can we collaborate with high school and junior college faculty to promote and improve CS education in Colorado?

4:30-5:00pm

Discuss whether to hold a third

conference, talk

about

collaborations

on CS education research and grants.

5:00pm-6:30pm

Optional visit to the Fort Collins Brewery in Fort Collins,

1020 E. Lincoln Avenue, Fort Collins, 80524

Pedagogic Practices

The automated grading of student programs conserves scarce resources and gives real time feedback to students.Partial adoption of inverted classroom via peer instruction has increased student engagement and interest.Assignment of an online tutorial to supplement labs and lectures has improved student programming skills.Continued integration of media computation makes programming assignments more relevant and fun.All of the above are accompanied by frequent programming quizzes in the lab to ensure that skills are developed.

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Organizational Practices

The use of undergraduates in addition to graduate students as teaching assistants.The staffing of a help desk and provision of additional online help via a bulletin board such as Piazza.The development of a consistent web interface and tools for all courses in the department.The staffing of automated tools to reduce rote teaching tasks and allow more time with students.Extra Credit: the hiring of teaching faculty with better pay, secure employment, and advancement potential.Extra Credit: the staffing of outreach programs, attendance at SIGCSE, starting an ACM-W chapter, etc.

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Challenges

Opinion: Teaching requires someone in the organization with full-time responsibility for undergraduate education!Otherwise processes are fragile, results are not repeatable, continual improvement is not possible.Rotation of faculty through high-enrollment courses leads to a lack of consistency in lower-level courses.Curriculum goes out of date, teaching materials are mismanaged, new teaching practices are ignored.Resources are insufficient in many areas: curriculum development, instructor training, tool development, etc.

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Participation by females and minorities is very low, and non-majors are often ignored

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Female Participation

CS Education – The Perfect Storm

Demand for Computer Science

is ExplodingSpotlight is on Diversity in Tech IndustryTech companies are publishing their numbers, including big names like Google – it’s not good.Microsoft exec (Satya Nadella) comments on gender and pay drove industry spotlight on issuesEnrollment increase in CS is dramatic!CSU is no exception, we had a 76% increase in undergraduate majors over 5 yearsFA16 freshmen commits is already greater than last year’s record enrollment“The current ‘boom’ in computing will likely shape our community for years.” - Booming Enrollments – Tracy Camp at SIGCSE 2016

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Response to this Perfect Storm:Other Institutions

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Many institutions are using enrollment increases to

improve

quality

of undergraduate education:

S

trategic plans for growth that address staffing, facilities, curriculum, etc.

Embracing the educational demands of majors and non-majors, thereby increasing revenue.

Organizations with responsibility and accountability for undergraduate education.

A formal process for recruiting and retaining teaching faculty, similar to the one for researchers.

Resources accountable for bringing in funding for scholarships, curriculum development, and diversity.

Response to this Perfect Storm: Addressing Diversity

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Many institutions are using well known strategies during this time to

address

diversity challenges

:

Aggressively improving curriculum and pedagogics

Participating in SIGCSE educational research

Staffing K-12 Outreach Programs

Community Building: ACM-W and Grace Hopper

Results

Harvey

Mudd

, Carnegie Mellon - 40% female entering

University of Washington – 30% female graduation rate

Texas A&M – 20% female enrollment

University of Colorado – 17% female enrollment

University of Arizona – 14% female enrollment

Colorado State University – 10% female enrollment

SIGCSE 2016

Trip report on ColCSE website includes an executive summary followed by a more detailed report:http://www.cs.colostate.edu/cseSpecial Interest Group on Computer Science Education (SIGCSE), held from 3/2-3/5 in Memphis, Tennessee.Around 1300 faculty, instructors, and secondary teachers attended the conference.Most attendees are teaching faculty or are doing active research in Computer Science education, or both.Beth Simon had the best paper entitled “A Multi-Institutional Study of Peer Instruction in Introductory Computing”My paper was “Testing Strategies for the Automated Grading of Student Programs”

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SIGCSE 2016 (Executive Overview)

Diversity continues to be a major focus of the conference. Many institutions have significantly improved female participation, but minority representation remains a problem. The success factors for addressing underrepresentation are now well known: a sustained effort with administration and faculty support and accompanying resources for outreach, mentoring, and curriculum changes are needed to be successful.

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SIGCSE 2016 (Executive Overview)

Online materials for computer science education continue to grow, including extensive online curricula, learning management systems, and automated grading tools. Many institutions are using online textbooks to replace traditional textbooks, and a variety of resources for K-12 instruction (or outreach) are available. See the section on online resources below for more details.

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SIGCSE 2016 (Executive Overview)

Increasing enrollments are problematic at many institutions, and adjunct faculty are in short supply. I attended a BOF session for adjunct faculty where over 30 attendees said they had (often more than one) open positions. It was claimed that 9 openings exist for every qualified candidate. Factor in salary, prestige and workload concerns, and the result is a shortage that may impact our hiring.

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SIGCSE 2016 (Executive Overview)

Emphasis continues on pedagogic techniques such as the inverted classroom, peer instruction, and pair programming, which are now widely accepted and well researched. Many departments are using the enrollment boom to increase staffing and resources to address diversity issues and to improve and grow service courses such as introductory programming or data science courses for non-majors

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