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1. Engaging CS1 Students with Audio Themed Assignments

   Mcquaigue, Matthew; Larson, Mack; Smith, Philip; Melech, Sydney; Subramanian, Kalpathi; Saule, Erik (April 2024, Journal of computing sciences in colleges)

   ACM (Ed.)

   Early computer science courses (CS1, CS2) are the cornerstone of student understanding of computer science. These courses introduce the foundational knowledge of computer science needed to understand more complex topics and to be successful in follow-on courses. It is thus important to introduce CS concepts in an engaging and easy-to-understand manner to increase student interest and retention. This paper presents a new approach to teaching the Computer Science 1 (CS1) course through our BRIDGES system. This approach aims to increase student engagement and improve learning outcomes by using audio-based assignments that they can manipulate and process audio signal information, as well as visualize and play them. We explain how to design and implement audiobased assignments and connect them to fundamental programming constructs such as variables, control flow, and simple data structures, such as arrays. These assignments encourage and engage students by using audio data they are interested in to write code, promoting problem-solving and improvements in their critical thinking skills. 

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2. Reevaluating the relationship between explaining, tracing, and writing skills in CS1 in a replication study

   https://doi.org/10.1080/08993408.2022.2079866  

   Fowler, Max; Smith IV, David H.; Hassan, Mohammed; Poulsen, Seth; West, Matthew; Zilles, Craig (June 2022, Computer Science Education)

   Dorn, Brian; Vahrenhold, Jan (Ed.)

   Background and Context Lopez and Lister first presented evidence for a skill hierarchy of code reading, tracing, and writing for introductory programming students. Further support for this hierarchy could help computer science educators sequence course content to best build student programming skill. Objective This study aims to replicate a slightly simplified hierarchy of skills in CS1 using a larger body of students (600+ vs. 38) in a non-major introductory Python course with computer-based exams. We also explore the validity of other possible hierarchies. Method We collected student score data on 4 kinds of exam questions. Structural equation modeling was used to derive the hierarchy for each exam. Findings We find multiple best-fitting structural models. The original hierarchy does not appear among the “best” candidates, but similar models do. We also determined that our methods provide us with correlations between skills and do not answer a more fundamental question: what is the ideal teaching order for these skills? Implications This modeling work is valuable for understanding the possible correlations between fundamental code-related skills. However, analyzing student performance on these skills at a moment in time is not sufficient to determine teaching order. We present possible study designs for exploring this more actionable research question. 

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3. 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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4. Implementing Transmedia Using a Narrative Framework for an Introductory Engineering Course

   Pina, J.; Ellis, G.W.; Mazur, R. (July 2023, ASEE Annual Conference proceedings)

   This paper details the process of developing and adapting a narrative framework for teaching an introductory geotechnical engineering course (EGR 340) through a systematic iterative procedure that embeds conceptual learning into a story format and, over time, elaborates elements and interactions within the story using methods of transmedia storytelling. Although the tools are presented within the context of geotechnical engineering, the approach can be applied throughout engineering education. The elaborative transmedia storytelling process we describe is based on the Imaginative Education (IE) teaching approach. Well-grounded in the learning sciences--but novel in engineering education--IE facilitates student engagement through the use of cognitive tools (such as extremes of reality, heroism, and the exploration of binaries). These tools are connected to types of understanding and serve to enhance a sense of mystery and wonder for topics that might not otherwise register as being immediately relevant to students. A significant benefit of this approach is that that it lends itself to modification and personalization through the inclusion of new features and methods of interaction at the level of the whole story and at the level of story elements. 

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5. Multilingual CS Education Pathways: Implications for Vertically-Scaled Assessment

   https://doi.org/10.1145/3478431.3499315  

   Kao, Yvonne; Weintrop, David (February 2022, SIGCSE 2022: Proceedings of the 53rd ACM Technical Symposium on Computer Science Education)

   The expansion of computer science (CS) into K-12 contexts has resulted in a diverse ecosystem of curricula designed for various grade levels, teaching a variety of concepts, and using a wide array of different programming languages and environments. Many students will learn more than one programming language over the course of their studies. There is a growing need for computer science assessment that can measure student learning over time, but the multilingual learning pathways create two challenges for assessment in computer science. First, there are not validated assessments for all of the programming languages used in CS classrooms. Second, it is difficult to measure growth in student understanding over time when students move between programming languages as they progress in their CS education. In this position paper, we argue that the field of computing education research needs to develop methods and tools to better measure students' learning over time and across the different programming languages they learn along the way. In presenting this position, we share data that shows students approach assessment problems differently depending on the programming language, even when the problems are conceptually isomorphic, and discuss some approaches for developing multilingual assessments of student learning over time. 

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