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1. Developing Empathy and Persistence through Professional Development in New to CSA Teachers

   https://doi.org/10.1145/3446871.3469793  

   Broneak, Cassandra ; Rosato, Jennifer ( August 2021 , ICER 2021: Proceedings of the 17th ACM Conference on International Computing Education Research)

   null (Ed.)

   To meet the rising demand for computer science (CS) courses, K-12 educators need to be prepared to teach introductory concepts and skills in courses such as Computer Science Principles (CSP), which takes a breadth-first approach to CS and includes topics beyond programming such as data, impacts of computing, and networks. Educators are now also being asked to teach more advanced concepts in courses such as the College Board's Advanced Placement Computer Science A (CSA) course, which focuses on advanced programming using Java and includes topics such as objects, inheritance, arrays, and recursion. Traditional CSA curricula have not used content or pedagogy designed to engage a broad range of learners and support their success. Unlike CSP, which is attracting more underrepresented students to computing as it was designed, CSA continues to enroll mostly male, white, and Asian students [College Board 2019, Ericson 2020, Sax 2020]. In order to expand CS education opportunities, it is crucial that students have an engaging experience in CSA similar to CSP. Well-designed differentiated professional development (PD) that focuses on content and pedagogy is necessary to meet individual teacher needs, to successfully build teacher skills and confidence to teach CSA, and to improve engagement with students [Darling-Hammond 2017]. It is critical that as more CS opportunities and courses are developed, teachers remain engaged with their own learning in order to build their content knowledge and refine their teaching practice [CSTA 2020]. CSAwesome, developed and piloted in 2019, offers a College Board endorsed AP CSA curriculum and PD focused on supporting the transition of teachers and students from CSP to CSA. This poster presents preliminary findings aimed at exploring the supports and challenges new-to-CSA high school level educators face when transitioning from teaching an introductory, breadth-first course such as CSP to teaching the more challenging, programming-focused CSA course. Five teachers who completed the online CSAwesome summer 2020 PD completed interviews in spring 2021. The project employed an inductive coding scheme to analyze interview transcriptions and qualitative notes from teachers about their experiences learning, teaching, and implementing CSP and CSA curricula. Initial findings suggest that teachers’ experience in the CSAwesome PD may improve their confidence in teaching CSA, ability to effectively use inclusive teaching practices, ability to empathize with their students, problem-solving skills, and motivation to persist when faced with challenges and difficulties. Teachers noted how the CSAwesome PD provided them with a student perspective and increased feelings of empathy. Participants spoke about the implications of the COVID-19 pandemic on their own learning, student learning, and teaching style. Teachers enter the PD with many different backgrounds, CS experience levels, and strengths, however, new-to-CSA teachers require further PD on content and pedagogy to transition between CSP and CSA. Initial results suggest that the CSAwesome PD may have an impact on long-term teacher development as new-to-CSA teachers who participated indicated a positive impact on their teaching practices, ideologies, and pedagogies. 

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2. Implications of Gamification in Learning Environments on Computer Sci-ence Students: A Comprehensive Study

   Zahedi, L. Ross ( June 2019 , 126th Annual Conference and Exposition of American Society for Engineering Education)

   Computers are used in almost all the fields in our daily life –they are used in various occupations and do the tasks with greater precision and as a result, made the life more comfortable. As such, more than 500,000 computing jobs remain unfulfilled in the US (Reported by app association), and many nations need more computer scientist. Therefore, this urge the need for engineering education community and researchers to focus more on underrepresentation of women in CS due to the fact that women currently comprise only 15.7% of computing degrees awarded ; Computer Science has one of the most considerable gender disparities in science, technology, and engineering and the number of female students choosing computer science as their major remains underrepresented regardless of recent improvements; and the reason behind this statistic is the challenges that lessen students’ motivation in CS majors; Programming courses have always had a negative image among students and usually need more practice. In order to increase the number of female students in CS and ensure the health of the community, there is a need to better understand and discover a mechanism that can improve women’s participation in computer science which leads to attracting more female students in computer science. Researchers have explored various engagements strategies in the fields of computer science. One of the strategies that have seen an increase and garnered attention in the last two decades is the use of video game elements or gamification in different fields such as education. Gamification -which usually refers to using video game mechanics in activities not related to video games - aims to increase participants’ engagement and enjoyment. This notion has been increasing popularity over time especially among especially education researchers because game elements -which provide challenges to the players and motivate them to set goals- can be used in learning environments appropriately to enhance the motivation of learners. While there is a strong body of literature around the implications of gamification on student learning, there are inconsistent results in the literature with regards to the interests or attitudes of women. This review aims to provide a critical evaluation of the use of gamification in the application in the existing literature in 1) education 2) computer science and 3) women in computer science to provide a basis for more targeted learning engagement strategies to motivate and retain more women in computing fields and build on the literature on gamification and gender. 

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3. Analysing adaptive scaffolds that help students develop self‐regulated learning behaviours

   https://doi.org/10.1111/jcal.12761  

   Munshi, Anabil ; Biswas, Gautam ; Baker, Ryan ; Ocumpaugh, Jaclyn ; Hutt, Stephen ; Paquette, Luc ( December 2022 , Journal of Computer Assisted Learning)

   Providing adaptive scaffolds to help learners develop effective self‐regulated learning (SRL) behaviours has been an important goal for intelligent learning environments. Adaptive scaffolding is especially important in open‐ended learning environments (OELE), where novice learners often face difficulties in completing their learning tasks.

   This paper presents a systematic framework for adaptive scaffolding in Betty's Brain, a learning‐by‐teaching OELE for middle school science, where students construct a causal model to teach a virtual agent, generically named Betty. We evaluate the adaptive scaffolding framework and discuss its implications on the development of more effective scaffolds for SRL in OELEs.

   We detect key cognitive/metacognitiveinflection points, that is, moments where students' behaviours and performance change during learning, often suggesting an inability to apply effective learning strategies. At inflection points, Mr. Davis (a mentor agent in Betty's Brain) or Betty (the teachable agent) provides context‐specific conversational feedback, focusing on strategies to help the student become a more productive learner, or encouragement to support positive emotions. We conduct a classroom study with 98 middle schoolers to analyse the impact of adaptive scaffolds on students' learning behaviours and performance. We analyse how students with differential pre‐to‐post learning outcomes receive and use the scaffolds to support their subsequent learning process in Betty's Brain.

   Adaptive scaffolding produced mixed results, with some scaffolds (viz., strategic hints that supported debugging and assessment of causal models) being generally more useful to students than others (viz., encouragement prompts). Additionally, there were differences in how students with high versus low learning outcomes responded to some hints, as suggested by the differences in their learning behaviours and performance in the intervals after scaffolding. Overall, our findings suggest how adaptive scaffolding in OELEs like Betty's Brain can be further improved to better support SRL behaviours and narrow the learning outcomes gap between high and low performing students.

   This paper contributes to our understanding and impact of adaptive scaffolding in OELEs. The results of our study indicate that successful scaffolding has to combine context‐sensitive inflection points with conversational feedback that is tailored to the students' current proficiency levels and needs. Also, our conceptual framework can be used to design adaptive scaffolds that help students develop and apply SRL behaviours in other computer‐based learning environments.

    

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4. Student Teamwork on Programming Projects What can GitHub logs show us?

   Gitinabard, Niki ; Okoilu, Ruth ; Xu, Yiqiao ; Heckman, Sarah ; Barnes, Tiffany ; Lynch, Collin ( July 2020 , Proceedings of The 13th International Conference on Educational Data Mining (EDM 2020))

   Rafferty, Anna N. ; Whitehill, Jacob ; Cavalli-Sforza, Violetta ; Romero, Cristobal (Ed.)

   Teamwork, often mediated by version control systems such as Git and Apache Subversion (SVN), is central to professional programming. As a consequence, many colleges are incorporating both collaboration and online development environments into their curricula even in introductory courses. In this research, we collected GitHub logs from two programming projects in two offerings of a CS2 Java programming course for computer science majors. Students worked in pairs for both projects (one optional, the other mandatory) in each year. We used the students’ GitHub history to classify the student teams into three groups, collaborative, cooperative, or solo-submit, based on the division of labor. We then calculated different metrics for students’ teamwork including the total number and the average number of commits in different parts of the projects and used these metrics to predict the students’ teamwork style. Our findings show that we can identify the students’ teamwork style automatically from their submission logs. This work helps us to better understand novices’ habits while using version control systems. These habits can identify the harmful working styles among them and might lead to the development of automatic scaffolds for teamwork and peer support in the future. 

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5. Applying enquiry and problem based learning to mission-oriented innovation policy: from policy to pedagogy to teaching and learning practice

   https://doi.org/10.1108/JIEB-04-2021-0046  

   Randles, Sally ; Dewick, Paul ; Hannan, Eleanor ; Nicholson, Dawn Theresa ; Rietbergen, Martijn ; Taylor, Christopher ; Vargas, Valeria Ruiz ; Wadham, Helen ; Withycombe Keeler, Lauren ( March 2022 , Journal of International Education in Business)

   Purpose This study aims to present theory, practice and original research findings to support the proposition that broad enquiry and problem-based learning (EPBL) approaches provide an appropriate pedagogical lens for sustainability educators to develop the knowledge and skills needed to work effectively within mission-oriented innovation policy (MIP) environments. Design/methodology/approach The research study comprised four elements, each of which used different research methods. The first element involved a literature review mapping the synergies between MIP and EPBL; the second element piloted the use of EPBL for undergraduate modules related to sustainability challenges; the third element involved external stakeholders in the co-creation of a postgraduate programme that brought together innovation and sustainability, with EPBL fundamental to the design and development; the fourth element curated and comparatively analysed international cases of EPBL in the context of MIP, and sustainability challenges in particular, highlighting the versatility of EPBL and the importance of creativity in EPBL design and implementation. Findings The systematic literature review reveals synergies between the key features of EPBL and defining characteristics of MIP, indicating the relevance of applying EPBL to support MIP. Two in situ pilots generated 13 recommendations on the benefits and operational challenges of applying EPBL. These recommendations informed the design and development of a postgraduate programme, involving a transdisciplinary consultation process with key industrial and societal stakeholders. Comparative analysis of four international case studies describing EPBL applied in practice in different international settings show there is no “one size fits all”. Instead, the application of EPBL to different sustainability challenges and for different learner groups demonstrates the versatility of the pedagogical approach and the creativity of the sustainability educators. Originality/value A discourse around the appropriate pedagogical methods and teaching/learning practice to equip the current and future workforce with the knowledge and skills to respond to MIP and global sustainability challenges is nascent but emerging. This paper makes a scientific and practical contribution to the discourse. The authors show how EPBL can underpin the design of programmes to provide learners with the knowledge and skills to support organisations working effectively within an MIP context, especially addressing sustainability challenges. The authors provide recommendations for educators seeking to embed EPBL within their curriculum and call for external stakeholders to proactively engage with educators to co-create programmes with context-specific outcomes. 

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